Mr. Zippy

There I was, minding my own business, walking down an old road from the mid-1800s that still gets occasional use, perhaps one or two vehicles a week. As I came over a small rise there was a lump in the road – and it moved!

The camera’s zoom lens brought the moving lump into focus, revealing it to be a porcupine walking up the road –

Porcupines have always remind me of the cartoon character Mr. Magoo: beady-eyed, near-sighted, somewhat bumbling, but – except for their occasional meeting with a fisher, bobcat or vehicle – things work out well in the end.

As it kept walking up the road the time came to switch the camera to video mode.

The porcupine came on and on, pausing to examine a fallen branch. There was a bit of hesitation as it appeared to pick up my scent, and then on it came. The porcupine reached my alpenstock, examined that, came closer still. And then I moved my foot –

From the fallen log the porcupine went first to one tree, then to another, and on to a third – a hemlock which apparently was just right, for it climbed that tree –

As it fled, it was probably the fastest porcupine I’ve ever seen. Fleet-of-foot they are not, their only effective defense comes from the 30,000 quills adorning their bodies and tail, a muscular tail that is snapped from side to side to repel and punish potential predators with a serving of quills.

Dragons & Damsels

Dragons and damsels are members of the order Odonata, an ancient group of insects commonly known as dragonflies and damselflies. The two groups are often lumped together as dragonflies (or darning needles), but they are different and quite easy to tell apart.

The easiest way to distinguish between them is by how they hold their wings when at rest. Dragonflies hold their wings spread horizontally while most damselflies hold their wings together over their backs and appear more delicate; there’s a small group of damselflies called spreadwings whose wings are held in an intermediate position.

These dragons and damsels frequent wetlands of all kinds, from arctic bogs to sluggish tropical rivers. Here in northcentral Pennsylvania they’re most often found along the edges of lakes and ponds, but some species inhabit swift mountain streams, others the largest rivers. Nymphs of all dragonflies and damselflies are aquatic until they climb from the water and emerge as adults. While most of the adults frequent water bodies, some spend a lot of time hunting smaller insects far from any water.

Here are some of the northeast's most beautiful dragons and damsels –

These insects have been on earth for hundreds of millions of years (the species were different then, some were much, much larger than any living species) and they’re still here.

Our Neighbors

We have a fair number of neighbors – some are humans, some aren’t. The humans are a mix: of women and men, of children and senior citizens, of a multitude of religions – or none, of folks who have lived in their houses for over 40 years, of others who arrived last year.

But this post isn’t about our human neighbors, it’s about our non-human neighbors whose ancestors have lived in the area since long before the first houses were built. If you’re a regular visitor to In Forest and Field you’ve already seen photos of some of the birds – as in this post.

Today’s post is about other of our wild neighbors, those mammals that frequent the hill above the house and occasionally (sometimes frequently) venture into our yard, where we’ve planted trees and shrubs and the grass is mowed. The mammals were captured by camera traps that take videos; some of our mammal neighbors are caught multiple times a day (think chipmunks, cottontail rabbits and gray squirrels), others appear several times a week (deer), others less frequently.

Here are the best of the videos, from just one month this year –

We don’t feed the bears or deer, so they’re either eating natural foods or just passing through on their way somewhere else. 

Perhaps you noticed that, beginning at 2:42 of the video, the deer mouthed the stem and leaves of a plant but didn't eat either, unlike the jewelweed that it is readily eating in the video. The uneaten plant is dogbane which is poisonous to most mammals – deer will not eat any portion of the plant.

The interaction between the rabbit and the crow was interesting: crows line their nests with hair, was it trying to pluck hair from the rabbit, or hoping to find some newborn cottontails to eat, or just having a little fun – crows are among the most intelligent of birds.