Snaky Panky

Allow me to introduce you to Elaphe vulpina – the Western fox snake.  This is a valuable animal to have around your yard as they dine principally upon rodents.  If you are a gardener they are your ally.  Belonging to the family of snakes that are constrictors - upon seizing their prey they coil around it to suffocate the animal.  After which they swallow it whole.  Their lower jaw is unhinged allowing this critter to swallow a rodent or bird five times the diameter of their head. Yum!

These are nonvenomous snakes and generally avoid people.  If handled they will frequently express a skunky, foxlike scent from a musk gland near their tail.  Hence the name fox snake.  If you pick one up use both hands as constrictors can be quite strong.  Wear gloves in case you get a dose of that musky discharge.  As a general rule they won’t bite.  Remember - they’re not poisonous - just in case a feisty one gives you a nip.

 

Last Tuesday there was this...

 

 

Eastern fox snakes mate in April or May, while western fox snakes mate from April to July.  Males wrestle one another to compete for females. 

In June, July, or August, the female lays between 6 and 29 leathery eggs. The eggs measure between 1.5 and 2.0 inches long and are deposited in forest debris or beneath stumps. After about 60 days, the eggs hatch. The young are independent at birth. The lifespan of wild fox snakes is unknown, but they live 17 years in captivity.

It's not often you witness snaky panky.....

 

Love In The Autumn Air

This short, silent, video vignette was captured at the very beginning of November.

That is a dandy buck chasing a girl deer - and if I'm not mistaken he's got loving on his mind.  And she's either playing hard-to-get or attempting to beat it out of Dodge.

Female whitetails generally come into estrus within a shared window of opportunity beginning in mid-October into mid-December.  Gestation is around 200 days with fawn drop beginning in April and into June.  Unbred does will come into heat again 28 days later. 

 

Pre-Rut

If you encounter a whiff of deer pee redolent in the autumn air look carefully beneath any shoulder height tree branches that are close by.  You may locate a bare patch of dirt in the turf that is trampled with deer hoof prints.  This is called a scrape.  Bucks create scrapes by using their hoofs to dig at the ground.   Once the soil is stirred up they urinate on the scrape.

Bucks don’t pee the way those of us males of the human species do.  We try to keep it off of our legs and boots.  Whitetail bucks actually try to pee on their own legs.  The object is to hit their tarsal glands in an effort to leave their scent on the scrape.  Every deer has its own unique scent. The tarsal glands hold concentrated amounts of that scent.  

scrape - bottom center and  licking branch top center

 

 

Another thing scrapes have is a licking branch - a tree branch will hang above the cleared out soil. Bucks will rub their forehead glands on the stick and will also lick it with their tongue.  

 

Scrapes serve much the same function in the whitetail world as a mailbox post or a fire hydrant does for dogs.  Scrapes are meant to show dominance over a territory but are normally used by more than one buck.   

 

These early scrapes are a bit different.  Few and far between they are mainly used to communicate as bucks begin to leave their bachelor groups and stake out their territory.  It is akin to posting a no trespassing sign on a property line.  Later in the season an active scrape will be used to communicate breeding readiness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, there are these beginning to appear on the landscape – buck rubs.   

 

 

Around these parts it is typically a tamarack sapling sacrificed to the cause.   

 

It is a common misconception that deer rubs on trees are caused by male whitetails attempting to rub the velvet from their antlers.  While it would not be unusual for a velvet-antlered deer to rub against a tree the rubbing seen at this time of year is a consequence of deer that have long-ago shed the velvet from their antlers.  The rub in the photo was made by a dominant buck.  Consider it both a visual and a sensory calling card brought on by an increase in testosterone levels.   

It isn't unusual for other bucks to add their contribution to the rub but it's more to do with establishing the pecking order.   

 

The term dominant buck is apropos given that one of the reasons for this behavior is to mark their territory and curb the lesser bucks both psychologically and hormonally.  This suppresses testosterone levels in the smaller bucks allowing the Big Guy to exert his influence and create the circumstances for successfully spreading his seed during the breeding season.  

 

The glands located in the forehead of the dominant male send a signal that this is my turf.  It also signals to the ladies of the male's readiness to mate.  Consider it the whitetail equivalent of passing-along your name and phone number to someone you might wish to meet again. 

 

Stay-tuned for additional updates from whitetail romance land.

Love in the Air?

This short, silent, video vignette was captured at the very end of January.

Two weeks before Valentines Day there is no mistaking the behavior captured digitally by an ever-vigilant trail camera. 

That is a dandy buck chasing a girl deer - and if I'm not mistaken he's got loving on his mind.

An occurrence more common in the southern latitudes - this behavior is less common here half-way between the equator and the north pole.  Nevertheless, it is not entirely unknown.  

Female whitetails generally come into estrus within a shared window of opportunity beginning in mid-October into mid-December.  Gestation is around 200 days with fawn drop beginning in April and into June.  Unbred does will come into heat again 28 days later.  

With better nutritional resources here in farm country female deer born in the spring are often bred in their first year of life.  These younger mothers will come into estrus later than mature does and their fawns are delivered in July and sometimes as late as August.  

It is these late-bred does that explains the arrival of newborn fawns on the landscape in summer.  These fawns are at a disadvantage going into the fall as they lack the head start necessary to put on sufficient bulk and fat reserves than those with the earlier start.  

While some may not survive their first winter - around here (food sources), the absence of large predators (wolves and black bear) and the moderating impact of water on opposite coastlines - these late arrivals stand a better chance of survival than their brethren born in Wisconsin's north woods.   

A remarkably adaptable animal the whitetail deer is. 

Gobbler

The girls and I hiked up to the north end of the property today to fetch a trail camera  and a turkey blind.

I'm going to use the camera to try something different - photograph some of the visiting song birds that are coming to the feeders.  It is going to be a new experiment so stay tuned for the results.

The blind belongs to my pal Braumeister and I can pass it along to him next time we meet.  I have made an executive decision to do no further turkey hunting this year as I've got too many other irons in the fire at the present.

That was probably a rash decision as I uploaded the photos on the SD card and look who was strutting his stuff for the ladies.  In the last two pictures you can see a hen about 15 to 20 yards distant.
Yesterday, precisely 24 hours from the time of this post...

click on the images for a closer look

Locust Love

Now that September has arrived love is in the air.   And the grasshoppers are courting, mating and laying eggs that will produce the next generation.   

I’ve lived a good long time and heretofore have not witnessed the grasshopper courtship ritual up close and personal. Perhaps my situational awareness has improved with age or maybe I'm learning to pay closer attention to the natural world around me.  I don’t want you to get creeped-out by this or think that I am some sort of weirdo voyeur as my observations and photo chronology were quite clinical and very scientific.  A day ago I encountered a couple of grasshoppers in my garden doing you-know-what so I brought them to the countertop in the garage for a closer look.  

With a bit of web-browsing and observation this is what I've learned. 

Male grasshoppers croon the grasshopper love song to summon a female.  They do this by means of rubbing their hind femur against a forewing or rubbing a forewing against a hind wing.  Tympana - eardrum-like structures on their abdomens - allow both male and female grasshoppers to hear.  These come-hither songs are species-specific. 

In any event, after hooking-up, the smaller male grasshopper will mount the female and the female curls her abdomen up to reach the male’s reproductive organ - called an aedeagus.  In a paroxysm of arthropodic ardor the male delivers a package of sperm called a spermatophore.  

This act of mating can take from 45 minutes to a day and a half.  Yikes!

click on the image for a closer look

With her eggs fertilized, the female will then seek to lay them using the same ovipositor used during copulation.  She will use specialized horns on her abdomen to dig an inch or two into the ground, extend her ovipositor into the hole and lay a pod containing dozens of eggs.  The egg pod is shielded by a thick covering that the female secretes during this process which later hardens.  In warmer and moderate climates the eggs will hatch in a matter of weeks while in Wisconsin they will overwinter and hatch in the spring.

Yes, even in the insect world, reproduction is complicated stuff.  The next time you read-up on old testament plagues just remember that it all starts with this.  And yes - the conjoined hoppers were returned to the garden and left alone to finish their business......

Beaking-up With a Mistress

It has been a long and public affair spanning more than three decades.  And after 32 years it has come to an end.  It is a bittersweet moment as this ragtop got a new life when acquired by me in 1986.  Shuttered in 2010 the Pontiac Division of General Motors is no more. 

The Pontiac is going to a new home.  To a  fella that wasn't even a glimmer in someone's eye when the LeMans was assembled on Baldwin Avenue in Pontiac, Michigan.  This was the main assembly facility for GM's Pontiac Motor Division since it was constructed in 1927.





It's been a long and enjoyable topless run.  She deserves a younger man...

click on images for a closer look

Adultress

Looking thru last month's Door County Advocate I stumbled across this tidbit from the Advocate's 'Traveling Back' column.

From 100 years ago - the January 21st, 1915 issue of the Advocate...

Where's the other party to the crime?  Running lustfully at-large?  

Scandalous!