Antidote

Could there be anything more adorable?

Wake up little boi pic.twitter.com/6nVAKEpBXD

— Cats With Unexpected Auras (@UnexpectedAuras) November 19, 2020

Critter Chronicles: We Still Have Cicadas

Although the noise at twilight is not quite as deafening as it was. We have here, in addition to the world-famous seventeen-year locust, annual cicadas as well, so every summer we get serenaded. And it turns out that there's also a thirteen-year cycle for some species.

I suspect, because of the noise level, that we'be hit a congruence of broods, although I don't think the seventeen-year bugs are quite due.

Critter Chronicles: The Nightly Chorus

If I were living in, say, the mountains of North Carolina, I would probably be talking about frogs. Whoever first started the rumor of the peace and quiet of the country was never in the Appalachians at night.

However, I live in Chicago, where, among other things, we have cicadas, the seventeen-year variety and the annual variety. I was stuck last evening, just before sunset, by how incredibly loud they can be. We have a lot of big old trees in my neighborhood, and once they've hatched in the spring and early summer and molted into their adult forms, the singing starts. They can be deafening.

Here's a short course on cicadas -- it's geared toward school kids, but Jeff the Nature Guy relates a couple of things I didn't know.

His cicadas are very quiet. If you're outside in my neighborhood in the evening in summer -- well, they're loud.

Critter Chronicles: Squirrels and Rabbits

For some reason, I haven't been seeing squirrels in the park in the section between Foster and Melrose, where I've seen as many as a dozen and a half as I go by on the bus. I suspect it's because there are a lot more people in that part of the park than is normal -- or a lot more dogs being exercised. That section is normally pretty much people-free, but I guess a lot of people are still not working and the weather's been mostly pleasant, if somewhat hotter than usual. Maybe the squirrels are self-quarantining.

On the other hand, I've recently seen hordes of rabbits in the neighborhood -- well, four. The most I've ever seen at once before is three; it's usually one or two. I suspect these may be a litter that's all grown up and out exploring the world -- they seem rather playful, chasing each other around then stopping to crop the grass.

I haven't seen many rabbits at the Zoo or in the park around the Zoo lately. I don't know if they're just not coming out or if the Zoo staff have made an effort to thin the population. There used to be quite a few in the Zoo proper. I once saw a rabbit feeding at the base of a shrub at the south entrance; a squirrel was foraging on the other side of the shrub, and, inevitably, they ran into each other. The squirrel levitated about three feet, and the rabbit just disappeared -- they can move really fast when necessary. It was one of those moments.

Critter Chronicles: Encounters with Rabbits

So, I saw one of our neighborhood rabbits this morning. He/she crossed the street to the bushes in our parkway, then hopped into the yard. As I came in the gate, he was sitting there on the sidewalk; we looked at each other for a while, then he sat up and washed his face. After another couple of minutes, he hopped toward me -- in stages -- and eventually, after many pauses, hopped past me and out the gate, then hopped down the middle of the sidewalk to the neighbor's yard.

I don't know if our rabbits are somewhat tame, or just used to people -- I suspect they don't get a lot of harassment, in spite of the number of dogs in the neighborhood. Maybe he just sensed, somehow, that I wasn't going to eat him.



Side note: I've been noticing a lot of very small dogs in the park. I mean really tiny. I've never noticed that before.

Critter Chronicles: Goslings!

Hordes of them, both at North and South Ponds. They're all busily eating and growing -- some, presumably the first hatched -- are getting quite large. Apparently, one mother serves as baby-sitter for a group of little ones while the other mothers get out from under for a while. I've been seeing groups of eighteen or more, of various sizes, under the supervision of one adult, although there may be a second adult standing guard -- presumably a male, since that's what they do. I saw a group of about thirty at North Pond -- I say "about" because they move around and they tend to blend together if they're close to each other.

Strangely enough, I haven't seen any ducklings yet, although there are pairs of mallards all over the place, and even a couple pairs of wood ducks.

And the notorious Lincoln Park squirrels are out in full force.

And down by the wolf habitat at Lincoln Park zoo, the black-crowned night herons are clacking and squawking and generally makes nuisances of themselves.

Antidote

Via Digby:

In a groundbreaking scientific breakthrough, two Cheetah cubs have been born through in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer into a surrogate mother at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

The births are the result of careful planning and innovative medical expertise through a partnership between the Columbus Zoo, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal, Va., and Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas—three leading institutions with a commitment to conservation. These efforts were also part of a breeding recommendation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ (AZA) Species Survival Plan® (SSP) and the Cheetah Sustainability Program (CSP), developed to manage a sustainable population of cheetahs in human care.

While the cubs’ biological mother is Kibibi, the cubs were delivered on Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 9:50 p.m. and 10:20 p.m. by Isabelle (Izzy). The cheetahs’ care team observed the births through a remote camera and continue to monitor Izzy and her cubs closely. Izzy, a first-time mom, has been providing great care to her cubs at this time.

Critter Chronicles: A Cacophony of Birds

Have you ever noticed how noisy birds are? Usually around sunrise is peak noise time, when all the songbirds are greeting the day and reminding everyone that they're here. It's died down a little bit over the past couple of weeks -- I guess everyone's got their territories staked out and mates safely in the fold, but there's still the dawn chorus.

Of course, sparrows are always chattering and squabbling, but we've got robins, cardinals, the occasional gull screaming (I'm less than a mile from the lake shore), and even every once in a while a skein of geese on their way to somewhere.

Speaking of, yesterday I saw the season's first clutch of goslings out in the park busily grazing with their parents. They can't be more than a few days old -- they're still pretty small. And I"m trying to figure out where the parents found to build a nest -- the reeds are just sprouting, and there's not much in the way of cover anywhere near where they were feeding. I keep thinking it's early yet for goslings and ducklings, but looking at the calendar, I realize it's that time of year -- they do tend to nest early.

(Side note: Also yesterday was my first sighting of a frog for a long time. It was just sitting on a branch poking out of the water, maybe waiting for a bug to fly by. Or not.)

Critter Chronicles --Addendum

I forgot to mention seeing a large group of robins in one small area of the park, all busily scurrying a few steps then stopping to listen, the way robins do. I'm not used to seeing such large groups -- over a dozen -- in a relatively small area. Come to think of it, I'm seeing a lot of robins, period, in the park and around home.

At any rate, one did find a worm -- pulled it out of the dirt, banged it on the ground a couple of times, then swallowed it in one long gulp.

We also had a mutant robin in the neighborhood, but I haven't seen it in a while. Large patches of white on its back and breast -- in fact, the breast was almost all white. It was much more timid than the other robins -- maybe it knows it sticks out.

Critter Chronicles

This may become a department here, with no specific time or day for posting. Inspired by my friend Terry, who replied to an e-mail largely concerned with what I had seen in the park that day with "You're so newsy!"

So here's some news that's not about the Plague, or the incompetent in the White House, or any of the other disasters, major and minor, that are considered "news".

To bring this up to date, here's just a few comments from recent wanderings. (Yes, I try to stay in as much as I can, but I really can't deal with spending days at a time at home. So I put on my armor -- mask and gloves -- and venture out to the park, which is theoretically closed, but try to keep Chicagoans out of their parks. Closing the parks doesn't really make much sense to me -- people are being careful about maintaining distance from each other, and especially along the lakefront, which has some of the highest population density in the country, the park is the main place that people go to walk, or run, or ride their bikes, or give their dogs a walk.)

Down at the Zoo, which, like every other public attraction, is closed, the black-crowned night herons are back and are starting to refurbish their nests. I remember a few years ago, when they first started nesting in the Children's Zoo, there were maybe eight or ten pairs. Now, I've lost count, and the nests have spread from the north edge of the red wolf habitat to almost the entire Children's Zoo. (There's a story here: the herons apparently first started nesting on the island at the south end of South Pond, which is administered by Lincoln Park Zoo. The Zoo staff, being very conservation minded -- the herons are listed as "endangered" in Illinois -- set the island up as a nature reserve, with signage on the boardwalk opposite the island. The birds decided they liked the Children's Zoo better.) The herons seem to prefer rather spindly trees, like birches, which is odd -- they're quite awkward when clambering around the branches. They're rather bulky birds for their size, with huge feet much better suited to wading in muddy ponds than perching on a skinny branch.

Speaking of herons, I saw a great blue flying around North Pond. Don't know if it was planning on taking up residence are just passing through. It's a bit early in the season, I think, for there to be many fish coming out of winter quarters -- although on sunny days there are turtles basking on some of the larger branches that have fallen into the pond. It's just a few, so far, but I remember one time I counted sixty-four out basking, and another two or three swimming, while walking along one side of the pond.

There are no large flocks of geese grazing on the lawns like there will be later this summer -- they've all paired off and are concentrating on getting ready for goslings. You see them in pairs now, and ditto ducks -- I saw a couple of pairs of wood ducks at North Pond, in addition to the omnipresent mallards.

And of course, there are squirrels. At certain times of day, they seem to be everywhere, busily foraging and trying to remember where they had buried goodies, just in case. For some reason I find squirrels particularly entertaining. I remember one summer, in a former residence, I was sitting the back yard when I heard a scrabbling behind me. I turned just in time to see a squirrel diving behind a slab of limestone that was leaning against the neighbor's garage; I looked up and there was a very disgruntled hawk -- not sure if it was a peregrine or Cooper's hawk -- just alighting on a branch. A near miss. At any rate, I had a confrontation with a Lincoln Park squirrel the other day. The squirrels of Lincoln Park are legendary -- shameless beggars, they used to come up and practically demand to be fed. Not so much any more, but this one was a classic. Sadly, I had neglected to put my usual store of cashews in my bag. The squirrel was not pleased.

And I should mention the flowers. At this point, there are still scillas -- great swathes of blue under the trees in parts of the park -- and daffodils are coming into full bloom. And there are still hellebores in flower. There are still magnolias blooming, and grape hyacinths are starting to blossom. And the trees, finally, are starting to leaf out -- there are faint washes of green, like watercolors, on some of the branches.

So that's the news of the critters in the park so far this spring. We'll see what they're up to as the season progresses.

Rabbits Are Magical

We have a couple of rabbits on our block. I see them sometimes munching away at a patch of lawn across the street, usually only one, but sometimes two, usually in the evening, but sometimes in the morning. They also browse around the garden at my place.

And they appear and disappear without warning. This morning I was out and saw one across the street, and when I turned to come back inside, the other one had appeared. They do that. The other evening I was out and the one across the street suddenly just vanished.

I've seen that happen before -- I was at the Zoo just outside the south entrance, and there was a rabbit browsing just inside the fence, next to a shrub. There was a squirrel foraging on the other side of the shrub, and sure enough, they were suddenly face to face. The squirrel levitated about three feet and the rabbit just disappeared. Gone. Poof.

They're also really good at holding very, very still, so they're hard to see to begin with.

The Great Outdoors -- Sort Of

For those of us who are pretty much housebound, here's a nice post from Water Girl at Balloon Juice with links to remote cameras at various zoos, aquariums, and outdoor parks.

Here's a sample from Chicago's own Shedd Aquarium:

Sea otters make everything better.
💙 🦦 Let’s all pause, take a big breath and watch Yaku play! pic.twitter.com/TiNslLvQhW

— Shedd Aquarium (@shedd_aquarium) March 21, 2020

Antidote

After that last lurching horror, a critter with some class -- and talent:

With thanks to commenter Karle Dubhe at Joe.My.God.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Animals

And the Trump regime's war on the environment continues:

The Trump administration moved on Monday to weaken how it applies the 45-year-old Endangered Species Act, ordering changes that critics said will speed the loss of animals and plants at a time of record global extinctions .

The action, which expands the administration’s rewrite of U.S. environmental laws, is the latest that targets protections, including for water, air and public lands. Two states — California and Massachusetts, frequent foes of President Donald Trump’s environmental rollbacks — promised lawsuits to try to block the changes in the law. So did some conservation groups.

Given that Trump's administration is filled with two-faced liars, I'm calling bullshit on this:

Pushing back against the criticism, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other administration officials contend the changes improve efficiency of oversight while continuing to protect rare species.

“The best way to uphold the Endangered Species Act is to do everything we can to ensure it remains effective in achieving its ultimate goal — recovery of our rarest species,” he said in a statement. “An effectively administered Act ensures more resources can go where they will do the most good: on-the-ground conservation.”

Bernhardt is a former oil industry lobbyist.

This just makes me sick at my stomach. Yes, I'm a nature freak, bolstered by the understanding that it's all one system -- it's all interrelated, and if you screw up one part, you damage the whole thing. And this is the only planet we have.

I wonder when the Trump boys are going to go on their first wolf hunt.

Read the whole article -- it's pretty awful.

Via Joe.My.God.

Saturday Science: Wandering

Although it sounds like this little critter had a destination in mind:

A young Arctic fox has walked across the ice from Norway's Svalbard islands to northern Canada in an epic journey, covering 3,506 km (2,176 miles) in 76 days.

"The fox's journey has left scientists speechless," according to Greenland's Sermitsiaq newspaper.

Researchers at Norway's Polar Institute fitted the young female with a GPS tracking device and freed her into the wild in late March last year on the east coast of Spitsbergen, the Svalbard archipelago's main island.

The fox was under a year old when she set off west in search of food, reaching Greenland just 21 days later - a journey of 1,512 km - before trudging forward on the second leg of her trek.

She was tracked to Canada's Ellesmere Island, nearly 2,000 km further, just 76 days after leaving Svalbard.

Could you walk over 2,000 miles in just over two months?

UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES

Antidote

There's a new litter of red wolf pups at Lincoln Park Zoo:

The arrival of spring also brings a litter of four critically endangered red wolf pups at Pritzker Family Children’s Zoo.

The pups, two male and two female, were born on April 13. The dam, Becca, and sire, Rhett, were recommended to breed as part of the Red Wolf Species Survival Plan® (SSP), a cooperative effort among Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) institutions to save species. This is the first litter for the zoo since 2010. . . .

Since 2005, Lincoln Park Zoo has been involved in the Red Wolf Recovery Program to try and assist the wild population with cross-fostering of zoo-born pups into wild family groups and other reintroduction efforts. Since that time, Lincoln Park Zoo scientists also conducted a Population Viability Analysis (PVA), a computer model which helped to evaluate different management scenarios for the zoo and wild populations and scientific advice to the Recovery Program. The future status of the North Carolina wild population is uncertain, but the Red Wolf SSP and Lincoln Park Zoo will continue to work toward long-term recovery efforts.

The picture's a little out of date -- they're out and about, exploring their home. I saw them yesterday. One of them got a little adventurous and went off on his own, but the rest were sticking close to mom.

Today in Happy Reunions

Just a reminder that good things do happen.

Boy reunited with his lost cat after 7 months apart pic.twitter.com/t5MpjTbvS6

— Awwwww (@AwwwwCats) April 22, 2019

With thanks to commenter jixter at Joe.My.God.

Saturday Science and Today's Must-Read: Poop-Sniffing for Conservation

Interesting post at Hullabaloo on how scat can help conservationists in preserving species:

Let's face it: All dogs like to smell poop. But this dog smells something else, too -- opportunity.

Train, a Chesapeake Bay retriever, sniffs out the scat, or poop, of elusive wild animals like jaguars and oncillas in the name of conservation.

It might sound like an unsavory task, but these scat samples are goldmines for researchers like Train's owner, conservation biologist Karen DeMatteo.

DeMatteo and a research team in Argentina are trying to pinpoint the habitats of endangered animals, but it's hard to figure out where they live if you can't find the animals themselves.

It's pretty interesting. Read the whole thing.

Antidote: Kitties!

In this case, a litter of orphaned mountain lion cubs. Via Digby:

The Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden recently welcomed a litter of orphaned Mountain Lion cubs. The cubs, two males and a female, are approximately ten-weeks-old and arrived at the OKC Zoo in late January after being rescued from the wild.

There's more information -- and more pictures -- at the link.

Antidote

Just imagine having a litter of Tasmanian devils to take care of:

With Tasmanian Devil numbers in the wild currently dwindling to between 15,000 and 50,000 individuals, every birth is significant. The mainland breeding program of which the Zoo is a part could play an important role in helping to re-establish healthy wild populations of the species in Tasmania if needed in future.

The Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae. It was once native to mainland Australia, but it is now found only in the wild on the island state of Tasmania, including tiny east coast Maria Island where there is a conservation project with disease-free animals.

Digby has a post on this, with more videos.

And if that doesn't satisfy your cute quotient for the day, I don't know what will.