A substantial layer of snow is a God-send for some animals. While a cold blanket of the stuff can spell hardship for the likes of turkeys, deer, and larger critters, the small and meek are comforted by its sheltering cover. Meadow Voles, being of the small and meek ilk, take advantage of snow cover to explore places normally off limits for foraging trips. You could say that snow allows them to eat without being eaten. This picture illustrates just how they do it.

  Among all the deer tracks you’ll notice a branch-like pattern of raised snow looking like a set of varicose veins bulging from the whiteness (excuse the anatomical reference, but it was the only one I could come up with). These are the runways created by Meadow Voles seeking greens out on an open lawn. Like bugs under a rug, the mice are able to tunnel out into the exposed grass and do so knowing that aerial predators such as red-tailed hawks, kestrels, or owls can’t see them. As the perennial protein choice of nearly every predator in existence, Meadow Voles strive to keep out of the food chain for as long as possible. Feeding out in the open is a sure invitation for early induction into the chain. Voles spend most of their time under the cover of high field grasses until snowfall draws them out into the shorter stuff.

   It has been shown that these nocturnal mice become more active in the daytime when living with snow insurance. This interesting snow tunneling pattern is a common late winter sight (here’s another set). You can see that the tunnels branch out from the adjacent field and provide a record of feeding sorties to and from the lawn. It seems that hungry voles are desperate for some luscious greens after a subsistence diet of dry shrub bark and seeds.

  Under the snow, the tunnels are shallow highways arched over with grass and their structure becomes visible once the snow retreats (see here).  The runways become littered with grass clippings and droppings – the mice finding no immediate need to be sanitary in these temporary alleyways. Meadow voles are voracious eaters and can consume 60% of their weight daily. Sometimes they even resort to cannibalism, but only under stress (as if life as a walking snack isn’t stressful enough).

  Meadow Voles, also known as Meadow Mice or field mice, are probably the most common and successful rodent in North America. They are found in field environs stretching from Alaska to the Midwest.  They are cylindrical in shape and covered with a dark brown pelt that lightens to a silvery sheen on the tummy (see here).  In hand (see here) they reveal their mousey good looks, but unlike others in the mouse clan they possess relatively short tails and ears. These short characters define them as members of the Vole tribe. The scientific name of the common meadow vole, Microtus pennsylvanicus, means “short-eared mouse from Pennsylvania” in Greek (the Pennsylvania part being where the original specimen was described by the 19^th century naturalist George Ord).

  The snow cover that created the conditions that allowed us to see the tunnel evidence has vanished in the last two days.  The Vole that made them is likely dead by now, but worry not, for there are millions more to replace him.  Their tremendous eating capabilities are matched by their tremendous reproductive abilities.  A female can crank out 3-10 pups and get them out of the house in a little over a month before immediately starting on another batch. They are love machines making tunnels of love.

A marvelous thing is the Waxworm/ To beekeepers it makes their heart squirm/ To panfish’s delight, / They’re a wonderful sight,/ But to call it a “worm” is the wrong term. 

I know it’s not safe to snap photos while driving, but doing so while on an isolated back country road is not as unsafe as doing it, say, on a busy interstate during rush hour. Life is relative, after all. Being that I was the only one on this particular stretch of snowy road, I gave myself permission to make the attempt to capture a flock of frolicking larks in the road ahead. The problem was that the flock of nervous birds would not sit still long enough for me to creep close enough to get them in my viewfinder. I crept, they flew, I crept, they flew.  You get the idea. 

  It was only upon the approach of a big blue snow plow that I, the camera, and a single lark were able to meet in time.  I snapped this picture and gunned my truck forward just before the plow, I, and the camera could meet at a single point in time. O.K., the picture’s not that great but at least it records the presence of a bird we frequently see along our roadsides – the Horned Lark.

  Our country roads frequently host winter flocks of Horned Larks who gather upon them to eat dirt – or more properly gravel.  In this situation, patches of the dirt road were exposed by the action of the plow. The sparrow-sized birds ingest tiny pebbles which end up in their gizzards as food grinders. As seed eaters, larks appreciate the grindstone qualities of good road gravel.

  If I were to literally follow the instructions laid out by that innocent little French song “Alouetta Alouetta, je te plumerai” I could show you one of those stony little gizzards.  This innocent little ditty is about a lark – a little gentle lark – being torn asunder.  First you rip off his little beak, his head, take out his eyes and tear open his back and do so in a merry euphonic manner. Why, you may ask? “To eat eet, but of course Monsieur,” would be the indignant French reply. People eat songbirds in Europe and find great pleasure in singing about it – “four and twenty blackbirds” for instance.

  Although I came upon 25 larks on that snowy stretch of road, not a one offered itself up for culinary inspection.  I also was not in Europe on a lark, but in West Michigan, so you’ll just have to take my gizzard description at face value.

  Horned larks are the only lark species found in North America. A long time ago a rabid group of Shakespeare fans tried to introduce Sky Larks here because they were mentioned by the Bard, but they were unsuccessful in this endeavor. Our native lark does a fine job of representing the clan. It is a pretty little thing, though not flashy. A black gorget hangs about the neck, and the yellowish face is accented with a black face mask framed by black eyebrows that terminate as little horns. Take a look at this professional shot (probably not taken from a car window) and you can clearly see the horns, but keep in mind that the birds don’t always erect these tufts. 

  The best way to describe their call is as a tinkling “ti-ti-ti”.  Theirs is a light airy sound that is often rendered as a series of bubbly ascending notes. My roadside flock tinkled out into the nearby cornfield and waited my passing.  Horned Larks are an open country bird – a prairie species really – that finds comfort in exposed fields and low cut grasslands. They will stick to this airy habitat as spring approaches and even manage to get off an early brood before spring plowing occurs.

  It was my intention to simply introduce the bird to you and be done with it, but I find that my use of the word “flock” to describe the roadside gathering might be somewhat controversial. Here in America, you see, it’s perfectly acceptable to use that term for a gang of larks but in Europe they have no fewer than five different terms for the same thing. On the outside chance that a Parisian reads this and scoffs at my ignorance (le stoo-peed commoner, no?), I will list the following descriptive words that have been used to designate a group of larks. You can have an ascension of, a chattering of, exaltation of, a happiness of, or even a springul of larks. 

  I have to admit that espying an exaltation of Horned Larks sounds so much interesting than just watching a flock of ‘em. 

You never know when it’s time to talk turkey, but when that time arrives it’s best to take advantage of it.

 This weekend, I ventured over to the west side of the state to northern Kent County.  The area north of Grand Rapids is getting hammered with lake effect snow this winter. Over a foot of the white stuff sits on the level ground and wind blown drifts are cresting over the weed-tops. Driving down an unplowed back country road through the rolling fields of the northern county, I spied a tremendous flock of wild turkeys in the distance. They were foraging in a stubble cornfield ahead.  Since there was absolutely no traffic, I simply stopped the truck in mid road and reached for my binoculars to take in the scene. A mist of fine snow obscured the distance, but I was able to count at least 60 of the big dark birds spread out over a half mile.

  Even though a substantial space separated them from me, a few alert avian heads shot upright and made note of my halted progress on the road. Soon the whole gang began to crane their necks and look about in confusion. A few of them continued to scrape away the snow cover like so many barnyard fowl and others were blissfully chasing one another with loping -almost dinosaur like -gaits. At any given time at least a half dozen birds managed to shoot a stink eye in my direction and keep abreast of me (that was a little joke, by the way). They all began to gravitate back towards the tree line in slow retreat. 

  Over the course of a few minutes I was able to determine that a majority of the birds were beardless and therefore females (that was not a joke).  Turkeys gather together into winter flocks based on sex and age. Hens, like the females in this group, stick together to form a sisterhood of survival. Young males, or jakes, will form separate gangs as will the adult males called Toms.  All this separate but equal stuff will end with the onset of the breeding season, but for now segregation is the law. Male turkeys are distinguished by their larger size, possession of fighting spurs on their legs, and long bristly tufts coming out their mid chest (these tufts are very hair-like in consistency and thus the reason they are called beards).  Like people, hens can sometimes have beards but, unlike people, the turkeys don’t relegate them to the circus sideshows.

  I decided to step out of the truck, leaving it in the middle of the road, to walk a short way into the field to take a look at some of the turkey sign.  Hens usually weigh about 8-10 pounds or so, so their bulk impresses a clear track into the moist snow.  They walk by placing one foot directly in front of the other and so leave a linear line of footprints when on the move. Here you can see a single wrinkled print with three large forward pointing toes and a small mark made by the tiny back toe. (Here’s another print with a 6 inch pen next to it  for size reference).  The field was pockmarked with deep scrape holes that exposed the soil level. The turkeys were gleaning corn grains left by the fall harvest.

  During the time I was investigating this sign, the whole flock had pulled together into a dark cautious mass about a quarter mile away along the tree line.  They clearly didn’t want to leave the field unless they had to.  Even if it took energy to dig down to it, the promise of waste grain was more than worth the effort. The pressures of finding late winter food reserves are made all that more difficult by heavy snow conditions.  Woodland nut crops, the mainstay of turkey fare, are buried under the deep snow whereas the wind-blown open fields offered easier access to food. Historically the fate of our northern turkeys has hung on the severity of our winters, which is why they are not found further north than the level of the Upper Peninsula and extreme southern Ontario.  My presence wasn’t helping this particular flock either, so I elected to scoot back to the vehicle and leave them be.

  Further down the road, I was admiring the stump fences that mark the fields in this area.  Danish farmers who worked these grounds in the early 1900’s found the place littered with the stumps of white pines cut during the great pine era.  What once was a mighty forest had been clear cut in the late 1800’s. All the land had left to offer was fertile ground for those willing to work it for crops. In the process of plowing the ground, the hardy immigrant farmers pulled up the stumps one by one and laid them up as fence rows which survive to this day. This deforestation from pine lumbering was one of the reasons that wild turkeys disappeared from Michigan in the first place. 

  The resurgence of the wild turkey is one of the great conservation stories of our time. Their return has occurred only within the last few decades – orchestrated by the hard work of game agencies and conservation groups. It wasn’t that long ago that the only wild turkey to be seen in these parts was to be found in a bottle of Wild Turkey Bourbon.

  I passed a hand-made sign out in front of one of those old Danish farms as I entered onto the main road.  I don’t know whether an old Dane lived there anymore, but the message in his yard was one that cut across cultural barriers.  “Repent” it said.  In the light of what we’ve just talked about I can see a dual message of both personal salvation and making good on past ecological wrongs.

  Most ice fishing bait critters are marketed with simple easily pronounceable names.  I believe this a marketing necessity brought about by tight-mouthed frozen fishermen attempting to express themselves when their lips are iced up. Burrowing Mayfly nymphs are simply called “wigglers” and Wax Moth larvae are dubbed “wax worms.”  In this, the second in my series of bait shop entomology articles, I’d like to address the most misleadingly named ice fishing bait of all time – the “Mousie.” 

In short, Mousies ain’t mice and they ain’t cute.  They are the aquatic larvae of a relatively nice looking fly called the Drone fly (see adult here).  A fly larvae, as you may or may not know, is generally called a maggot.  It so happens that the maggot of this particular fly is commonly called the Rat-tailed Maggot. Now there’s a name to inspire all kinds of nice thoughts.  The necessity of calling them Mousies should become immediately obvious in polite society.  For instance, my wife will allow me to put a container of Mousies in the refrigerator next to the salad dressing, but would have forbidden a container of Rat-tailed Maggots.  Pre-schoolers love looking at Mousies but their parents will forbid them to look at Rat-tailed Maggots. Of course, I should mention that ice fisherfolk also call them Mousies because they do resemble a mouse in a somewhat horribly skewed way. Take a look at this view and decide for yourself before further reading.

  Rat-tailed Maggots are not cuddly looking things.  Basically a fleshy white cylinder with a needle sticking out of its butt, there is little to recommend this maggot for public viewing. I guess you could say it has a body for radio.  There is no actual face to present to the microphone, but the narrow end of the thing is technically the head end. There are seven sets of leg-like bumps arranged on the body that almost qualify as such, but the most obvious feature is the needle end – the tail of this little naked semi translucent pulsating mouse. It is this wonderful little tail that demands a closer look.

  When not residing in a bed of septic woodchips (this is how they are packaged at the bait shop) Rat-tails live in sewage.  O.K., let’s not get all shocked here – they are filthy little fly maggots after all. They find comfort in contaminated water, farm manure run-off, and other low oxygen environs that are commonly defined as maggot-gagging places.  The only way to survive in this nutrient rich swill is to use a snorkel to insure a constant supply of clean air (otherwise they too would gag).  The so-called “tail” is a telescoping breathing tube used for just such a purpose. Although the critter may only be 20 mm long, its snorkel can extend out nearly 40 mm thanks to a hollow three segmented setup that comes out like the leg on a camera tripod.  Here’s a great view of a Mousie using the full extent of its tube to reach the water surface.

  I feel it is necessary to mention that technically the Mousie breathes through its hind end.  What else would you expect from a creature sometimes called a Filth Fly by non-fishermen? 

  Sewage life is relatively easy. There are no real competitors for the rich supply of food. The maggot merely strains the watery poo through finely spaced bristles located around the mouth. Particles trapped in the sieve system are taken into the digestive tract and eventually turned into more diluted poo at the other end. In answer to the occasional need to move about, those stubby leglets are set into rhythmic motion. I clocked one of these guys (perhaps it was a gal) achieving the breakneck speed of 2 inches per minute.  At this rate, I calculated that it would take him/her/it approximately 66 days to go a one mile (a worthless fact, perhaps, but fascinating none-the-less).  You and I could certainly move faster than that if we found ourselves immersed in sewage – even if we had a snorkel sticking out of pants!

  A Mousie has little need to move any great distance.  Once they have completed their development, they need only to crawl up out of the water to find a place to pupate (usually only a few feet away). Alas, our bait Mousies will never have the opportunity to turn into adult Drone Flies.  They are destined to enter the aquatic food chain through the mouth of a fish.  It is of small comfort to note that these maggots have extremely tough skin – a trait that makes them well suited to bait life.

 Adult Rat-tailed Maggots relinquish their maggoty ways and devote themselves to a life of nectaring at flowers.  They are frequently called Flower flies because of this habit. I’ll have to introduce you to one of these attractive little creatures sometime, but we’ll have to leave this story in the sludge for now.

  Ogden Nash once quipped that “God in his wisdom created the Fly, and then forgot to tell us why.”  In the case of the Mousie fly larvae, I believe the answer is that somebody has got to eat that stuff.

    A mid-winter woodchuck is basically dead to the world. When I say this, I don’t mean “dead” as in the midst of a deep sleep, I mean it as being as close to death as you can get without actually being actually so.  Despite the apparent ease with which Malverne Mel, Stanton Island Chuck, Pardon Me Pete, and Punxsutawney Phil rise out of their stupor to make their Ground Hog Day predictions they can do so only with the heavy assistance of their handlers. I believe that Phil has a heated burrow with a hot tub and tiki bar at his pad.  He is not one of the common ‘chucks, but instead one that is forced to deny his very woodchuckiness.  It is rumored that he even chucks wood – an activity totally against the species grain.

 Most wild woodchucks, this time of year, are curled up into a tight ball and engrossed in a self induced state of denial. Deep within their burrows they are hibernating and completely removed from the realities of the harsh world above (see here a picture of a hibernating woodchuck- click on the 6th picture down).  You could dig ‘em up and put them in front of the television cameras and they would say exactly nothing.  It’s not an antisocial thing, rather a physiological thing.

  There is a very select group of mammals that have the ability to hibernate.  Animals such as the Woodchuck, Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel, Jumping Mice and all of our regional bat species choose this strategy.  Others such as Opossums, Raccoons, and Skunks retreat to their dens to sleep off bouts of severe weather, but they need to come back out to re-fuel throughout the winter. They sleep but don’t hibernate. Even Black Bears don’t truly hibernate – they go into a deep sleep. Winter bears can be roused relatively easily, so it’s a wonder why folks don’t go about waking them up on Groundhog Day to ask them for predictions. The answer to that question should be fairly obvious (an angry bear will not tolerate men in top hats and crowds of reporters with flashing cameras).

  The answer to the question asking why true hibernators do what they do is not so obvious. The impending seasonal lack of available greens certainly forces the decision out of the woodchuck, but this is not the entire answer. The cottontail rabbit, a mammal of similar size and food needs, chooses to scrape through the winter as an active creature.  For now let’s just gloss over the thing and simply say that the ‘chuck and his fellow members of the “Hiber Nation” do what they do because they can.

  Hibernation is controlled by body chemicals.  A substance, unimaginatively called H.I.T., or Hibernation Inducement Trigger, is produced at the request of a structure in the brain called the hypothalamus. This control center, located mid brain under the thalamus, east of Eden, and just ahead of the hippocampus, is prompted into action by the shortening days of autumn. Once this chemical is circulating in the bloodstream, all kinds of things begin to happen. Woodchucks become Ground Hogs, for instance. They begin to eat like, well, hogs and put on a rich layer of fat – including a special patch of fat called brown fat between the shoulder blades.

  Next, the corpulent creature vows abstention from further eating, makes one last visit to the bathroom, crawls down in his den and curls up.  The transformation into hibernation mode is gradual but dramatic. Blood composition changes, hormonal balances are re-figured, insulin levels are increased, and vessels dialate (constrict) in order to maintain blood pressure. Breath rate, heartbeat, and body temperature all take a plunge.  This isn’t napping!

  A woodchuck in full hibernation is cold to the touch and appears to be stone dead. From an active body temperature around 95 degrees F the critter has descended to around 46 degrees F. The heart only beats about 5 times a minute (as opposed to an average of 100 beats per minute) and the breath rate is reduced from 30-100 per minute to once every 5 minutes. Only the heart and brain are kept relatively warm and they are fed by the reserves of body fat.

  Researchers have conducted all kinds of experiments, some down right evil, in their attempts to understand the mysteries of hibernation, but two stick out in my mind. In one, a hibernating chuck was sealed up in an airtight jar filled only with Carbon Dioxide gas for one hour.  This treatment would have killed a summer chuck within minutes, but had no ill effect on the slow respiring winter chuck.  In another experiment, blue dye was injected into the leg vein of a hibernating ground hog. The dye didn’t circulate to the rest of the body until springtime when the critter woke up. That same experiment on an active animal resulted in the dye reaching all parts of the body within a few minutes -even tinting the eyeballs blue.

  Only warming ground/ air conditions or the internal ringing of a pre-set biological clock will awaken our sleeping beauty (while not exactly beautiful, chucks are kinda cute).  Quick metabolism of the brown fat is involved in this, but we’ll talk about the awakening procedure some other time. For now I’d like to let sleeping chucks lie about the weather.

Yesterday was February 2. What significance that day had for you depended primarily upon your culture or lack of it. Be you a witch, pagan, wood sprite, hill folk, city folk, catholic folk, fossorial mammal or a combination of the above (although you can’t be a pagan catholic you could be a hill witch), your explanations will vary.  Billy, Phil, Wiarton, Shubenacadie, and Dave disagree even though they are closely related. One thing that is fairly certain is that Groundhogs had very little to do with it.

  For many of us yesterday was Groundhog Day. This meant that the name of Punxsutawney Phil was invoked and images of the sleepy forecaster were plastered across the news media. Phil saw his shadow, they say, and his top hat wearing translators have forwarded his declaration that six more weeks of winter lay ahead. 

  There are dissenters in the species rank, however. No fewer than 17 “official” ground hog forecasters have cropped up over the years and their predictions are rocking the very foundation of Ground Hog Day. Dunkirk Dave, of New York saw no shadow and boldly proclaimed the early onset of spring and Shubenacadie Sam (Nova Scotia), Buckeye Chuck (Ohio), and Jimmy the Groundhog (Wisconsin) agree with him.  Only Sir Walter Wally (North Carolina) and West Indies Wilbur (do they even have ground hogs in the islands?) side with Phil for this year’s prediction.

  It’s no wonder that the others are gnashing their rodentine incisors.  Phil – actually a series of creatures since 1887, better called “the Phils” – has (have) been wrong over 60% of the time.  That is worse than guessing, in case you are doing the math.  Phil has been giving the brotherhood a bad name, so the others are trying their paw at this game but are proving to be just as unreliable.  While Gus Wickstrom’s Pig Spleen forecast method has proven only slightly more accurate, the truth is that Ground Hogs shouldn’t be expected to possess any prognostication abilities.

  I suppose we could blame the Germans.  German immigrants settling in western Pennsylvania brought an ancient old world tradition with them and planted it firmly on American soil. Although the original tale centered on a bear, the idea of a creature rising up out of the ground to see – or not see (that is the question) its shadow was central to the story.  “Seinen Schatten Sieht, so kriiecht er wieder auf sechs wochen ins Loch”, so goes the rhyme – if the bear sees his shadow on Feb. 2 he will crawl back into his hole for another six weeks. Over time, hedgehogs and European badgers have been interchanged with the bear.

  We can’t place blame on the early Catholic Church for trying to clean things up, but their efforts have confused the situation a bit.  In the ancient days, the period around Feb. 2 fell exactly half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.  This was the time to celebrate the renewal of spring with pagan sacrifices, the invocation of wood spirits, the heavy intake of spirits, and the induction of new witches into the Land of Oz.  The church astutely chose to place a solemn ceremony on that very day and call it Candlemas.  That way everyone could still get together for a big party but put their celebratory efforts toward the forces of good.

  During Candlemas, all the church candles to be used for the year were blessed.  The candles represented Christ and his role as the Light of the World – this melded well with the concept of increasing daylight which brought healing to the land and the soul.  The candle/Christ tradition still holds today but the pagan underbelly is still there. Magical earth powers are sometimes credited to the candles. Blessed candles had the potential to ward away “tempest, thunder, devils, fearful sprites, damaging hail, and frost” according to one old English rhyme.

  It had long been tradition (possibly as early as the 4^th century) to use a little phrase during Candlemas which went something like this: “If Candlemas is mild and pure, winter will be long for sure.”  Another rhyme went “If Candlemas day be bright and clear, there’ll be two winters in a year.”  Does this sound familiar?  Does it? Huh” Huh?

  It is likely that this Candlemas phrase was an attempt to replace the earlier pagan ditty which used the image of a sleeping animal rising from the earth and casting a shadow.  Basically it didn’t work. Instead a brown bear became a hedgehog then a badger and finally, in the absence of any of them, an American ground hog. Somehow the deep meaning of the renewal story got trivialized into a movie starring Bill Murray.

  So you see, ground hogs got sucked into this thing and have unjustly suffered in the limelight. They now have to endure the label of groundhog when their proper name is Woodchuck.  Because they spend their winter in a state of suspended animation, they don’t know diddly about winter and are forced to endure handling by strange men.

  Just how “out of it” winter woodchucks really are will be the subject of my next entry. Prepare ye the way for the hibernating ‘chuck, but he ain’t coming out on groundhog day.

  Out on the big waters of the Detroit River and Lake Erie life goes on beneath the cover of winter ice. Ice fishermen are well aware of this fact, although their version of the story is very icthyocentric (fish oriented).  To them the meaning of life comes in the form of a 14 inch Perch or a slab-sided Bluegill. Heaven’s gate is a round hole through the ice providing access to an endless procession of filets.  But when the point is forced, experienced fishers will grudgingly admit that there is more than just finned life beneath their feet.

  Truth is, just about every aquatic life form from mudpuppies to crayfish are active during the winter.  I saw a very large bullfrog tadpole cavorting around an open water patch two weeks ago and have heard reliable stories of painted turtles swimming under the ice. Yesterday a friend relayed a story to me that a fellow ice fisherman detected something “that looked just like a stick bug” crawling up out of his hole and out onto the ice. The unexpected guest turned out to be a Water Scorpion – not a scorpion at all but merely a spindly relative of the giant water bug. 

  One winter water critter that all fishermen are familiar with is the ever popular “wiggler.” These creatures are sold as bait, along with leaf worms, wax worms, mousies and the like. Unlike their shelf mates, wigglers are a natural part of the local offshore waters. Wigglers are actually insect nymphs officially known to the non-bait world as Hexagenia or Burrowing Mayflies (see here).

  It’s nice having such easy access to these entomological specimens because it saves you from taking a very cold dive to the lake bottom.  For a buck seventy-five, you can walk into a local bait shop and come out totally dry and in possession of a plastic bait container crammed with 24 mayflies. I discovered that I had 25 in my recently purchased container, but decided not to return the extra one (although I felt guilty for several prolonged minutes).  I released my charges into a larger pan of water for closer examination and would like to share a few observations with you.

  Swimming Mayfly nymphs manage to propel themselves in a manner similar to miniature whales – very clumsy tiny whales.  They rhythmically wave their abdomen up and down in order to move in a haphazardly forward direction. In other words, they wiggle (which is why fishermen call them wigglers rather than tiny clumsy whales). Burrowing mayflies are not built for sustained swimming, but they can be forgiven this aquatic inadequacy because they are built for, you guessed it, burrowing in the bottom muck. This is why they call them…never mind, you already know what I am going to say.

  Take a look at this shot and you can see that an individual nymph is about 2 inches long. I’ve provided a dime for size comparison (Mr. Roosevelt is just under ¾ inches in diameter here).  Those feathery things lining the side of the abdomen are gills.  Three tail filaments trail off the back end and six robust legs can be seen at the front end. A pair of beady black eyes, a like number of antennae, and a set of substantial tusks are evident on the head. All the parts are tinged with a pleasant golden hue that almost makes them look appetizing – at least to a hungry fish.

  It is the full intention of every young burrowing mayfly to become a big mayfly so they need to deliberately avoid predators while fulfilling their personal destiny to get fat. They start off as eggs laid the previous summer by the flying adults. Over the course of the next year, the nymphs (a.k.a. naiads) eat algae and detritus, and shed their skins many times to accommodate their growing size.

  Nymphs operate out of a small semi-circular tunnel in the bottom muck which they excavate with a powerful set of shovel-shaped front legs and stout tusks (features best appreciated from this angle). The passage has two open ends and the animal positions itself midway along its length. Constant gill motion keeps a steady flow of water going through the corridor and tiny particles of food are snagged in the hairy fringe bordering the head and legs. Every now and then, the nymph brings the fringe up to its mouth to take in the particulate goodness.

  It is mesmerizing to watch the waving motion of the gills as they pulse in sequential waves from front to back. The gills are operated in pairs. Their tips are brought together over the abdomen and smoothly returned to their side position.  A glance at these two images – first this one then this one – will give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

  My 25^th mayfly didn’t last very long.  It died soon after I poured it and its container mates out into the water tray. My consumer guilt now completely gone, I thought about returning it to the bait store for a refund, but opted not to. Instead, I quickly returned the others to their container and placed them back in the fridge. It is crucial to maintain the chilled conditions of winter water because cold water retains more oxygen which is easier to retrieve by gilled critters.

  There are many features of Burrowing mayfly life that are noteworthy but only so much patience on your part to hear them. So, let’s boil this down to a few summary remarks. Ecologically, it’s important to note that Hexagenia are one of the most important sources of fish food in the entire lake system. They are eaten as nymphs and adults. When they emerge as winged flyers in June or July (not May) they will temporarily take over the near shore world and everyone will know them as those “blanky blank fish flies.”  Mayflies live for that brief 48 hour period when they can break the bonds of the water world.  Until that time they bide their time in relative obscurity beneath the winter ice – known only to fishermen and the fish they seek.

  One could argue that there are at least six types of highway hawks, but only three make my short list.  Officially, I will admit, there are no birds that actually go by the name of “highway hawk,” but the Red-tailed Hawk, Kestrel, and Rough-legged Hawk are three species that could justifiably claim that name. By my definition a highway hawk is a daytime bird of prey (hawk) that can be seen from a moving vehicle while it is utilizing the habitat adjacent to a highway.

  My terribly sophisticated definition eliminates hawks that might happen to fly over the highway while you are in the act of driving down it. I often see Northern Harriers, Cooper’s, and Sharp-shinned Hawks on any given winter drive, but these birds are usually going from hither to yon and not actively using the grassy area next to the road.  The three mentioned highway hawks all make heavy use of our linear grasslands.

  If this were a commercial, I would need to post a disclaimer across the bottom of the screen in which microscopic letters would state that extensive bird watching through the window of your vehicle can be hazardous if you are the driver of the vehicle. Driving while under the influence of hawks can pose a potential risk of inattention to the road ahead. If you experience a bout of vehicle hawking which lasts for over four hours then you will need to contact your physician.  

  Certainly you need to keep your eyes on the road at all times when your car or truck is in motion, but I don’t think there is any regulation against engaging in an occasional bout of roadside nature study.  Our winter trio of hawks will provide you with many short simple, and safe, viewing opportunities.

  There are two common and one uncommon highway hawks to consider. The uncommon one is the Rough-legged Hawk (see here). These visitors from the Arctic come down to enjoy our relatively mild winters. I saw one a few weeks ago while traveling west on M-50 out of Monroe. They have the habit of sitting at the very tippy top of a tree and this individual stood out like a sore hawk because they are quite large. I did a turn around to get a better look at the hunter but my out-of-the-ordinary behavior spooked the bird and he sailed off.  Although Rough-legs come in many different color variations, the most common is as pictured with a dark stripe across the belly, light coloration and a mostly white rump.

  By far the most common highway hawk is the Red-tailed Hawk.  Adult birds certainly have the bright brick red tail (see here), but the brown-tailed juvenile birds are often seen as well (see this page).  You might confuse this species with the Rough-legged, but there are two things to help you in this regard.  First of all, the dark band on the Red-tail’s breast is further up the chest (almost like a Rough-leg with its pants pulled up into a wedgy position) and it is very speckled and diffuse.  Some birds have a nearly solid white breast.  Secondly, there are far far more Red-tails than Rough-legs. During a three hour trip down to central Ohio on Sunday, I saw at least a dozen Red-tails and exactly no Rough-legs. 

  I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the Rough-legged Hawk.  They look very much like Red-tails at highway speeds. Sorry, I was just trying to be complete. You can wait a month or so and they’ll be gone, or you can drive with your eyes closed in order to avoid any potentially confusing sightings.

  I strongly suggest that you keep your eyes open while driving because, aside from the obvious reason, there will be many chances to spot the third member of the highway hawk core – the American Kestrel (see here). These diminutive and colorful falcons are regular roadside features that prefer to perch on power lines. Aside from their small size and bright feather coat, they are easily identified by their nervous tail twitch.

  The entire highway hawk corps sit high atop their selected hunting perches – be they fence posts, tree limbs, or power lines – and are easily seen.  They are there looking for Meadow Voles.  Voles thrive in the grassy environs of median strips and shoulders and they represent the perfect survival food for any patient overwintering raptor. In most cases, the birds are stationary and will not move during the brief time they are in your view, but other times they will be hovering or proceeding with food procurement at the exact moment of passing.  It is in witnessing these active moments that the highway hawker is rewarded.

  One requirement of any highway hawk is the ability to ignore the roar of traffic and to focus on the task at hand – mouse killing. Once the prey is spotted, they launch into a controlled descent and attempt to pounce onto the hapless victim. Large hawks kill their prey with a crushing grip while the Kestrel needs to deliver a coup-de-gras with a neat snip of the beak. If successful, the prey is taken back up to the perch and converted into a meal. Most of these attempts are un-successful so highway hawks need to have the tenacity to try and try again.

  One fascinating hunting behavior, honed to an art by both the Red-tail and the Kestrel, is called kiting by bird geeks.  By adjusting to the fine variations of a head wind or an up-draft, these birds can hover as if suspended in space by a kite string. When hovering, the bird is fixed over a certain spot and is constantly flaring its tail and wings to maintain position. The head remains stabilized – with gyroscopic grace – which allows the bird to scrutinize a potential mouse location for 10 seconds or more.

 Hawking on the highway can be an enjoyable activity in which you and the hawk are remote observers of each other from two worlds, but on occasion the two worlds can collide. Several years ago, a dead Red-tailed Hawk was presented to me by one of my staff.  He had found it along I-94.  The unique thing about this bird was that he was still clutching a dead Meadow Vole in his talons.  It seems that the hunter swooped down upon the mouse and was in turn killed as it was struck by a passing car. It was quite a task to pry the expired mouse loose from the hawk’s death grasp.

  I believe it is possible that the circumstances of this singular death have entered into the legendary literature of Vole Land.  In the language common to all roadside Meadow Voles, the tale relates how one brave vole called Voley (these mice are rather uncreative when it comes to names)  lured the deadly hawk enemy (called AirDeath) into the path of a car (called Squishers).  Voley was sacrificed in the effort, but his bravery resulted in the death of at least one dreaded highway hawk. “All Hail to Voley.”

  Friday, Jan. 25 was a bone chilling day.  It was one of those days that give credence to any saying which relates temperature to a brass monkey or a certain part of a witch’s anatomy. Since I’ve previously waxed poetic about the stillness of a winter morn, I’ll spare you the digital ink this time and take you on a very short, very practical walk.  With the morning mercury hovering around 4 degrees Fahrenheit, it was a day unsuited for lengthy observation.

  The light coating of fresh snow crunched loudly under my boots. Any attempt at stealth was worthless since each step crackled through the air like a gunshot. I’ve forgotten how noisy cold snow could be. Most sensible creatures are inside or under the cover of shelter in this kind of cold – conserving valuable energy until the sun warms things up a few degrees – so I didn’t fret about scaring too many things off.  A small flock of fire-red male cardinals did beat a hasty retreat from the brush ahead of me, but they were the exception to the otherwise frigid time suspended landscape.

  It became apparent that nearly every deer in the vicinity had been out under the cover of darkness the night before.  Their tracks were everywhere. I swear they were playing some version of tag football or monkey-in-the-middle while the rest of us were still engaged in our warm slumber. Equipped with insulating hollow hairs, deer suffer little from outright cold and will move about with impunity as long as the wind is down.  Sometime, during half time I guess, they were earnestly engaged in pawing away patches of snow to expose the greens hidden below. This behavior creates a distinctive track mark where it looks like a broom was used to brush away the snow.

  Take a look here at one of these scrape marks. You’ll need to place an imaginary deer in this spot to watch him paw away with his hooves and pluck select greens from among the grasses. Deer do not have teeth in the upper front portion of their mouth, so they need to cut the vegetation with short upward jerks. The lower front teeth clamp the plant stem up against the toothless, but hard padded, upper half and the jerking action rips it free. Note the spread of clippings scattered over the snow that result from this behavior.

  I spotted another set of deer related markings in the snow just about the time I realized that my mustache was freezing to my nose. These marks were made by a Deer Mouse doing the 50 yard dash over a clearing between shelter spots. These scrubland mice run in the same “hind feet before front” manner as squirrels and rabbits. Because their hind feet are only a few inches ahead of their front feet, the track impression is quite small. Take a peek at this track set and you’ll notice the clear impression made by the long tail flipping from side to side.  This tail mark is a definite feature that distinguishes their tiny tracks from those made by a stub-tailed meadow vole.

  It takes little imagination to picture the little brown and white mouse beating haste across the moonlit clearing very close to the roosting site of the Long-eared Owls (to whom I gave introduction earlier in the season). No doubt praying for deliverance from evil, the track maker was focused on reaching the safety of the home space – wishing for anonymity in the dead of night.

  His home, in this case, was a tight ball nest perched in a tangle of grape vines about 8 feet from the ground. Deer Mice tend to be arboreal creatures and think nothing of climbing trees or branches in pursuit of home and health. Mouse nests are rather easy to spot in the heart of winter because of the new material added to them at the beginning of the season. They take over old bird nests and install a fresh layer of shredded cat-tails or grasses to roof the structure over. Entrance is achieved via a hole at the bottom.  The bi-colored appearance betrays the occupant as a Deer Mouse.

 I approached the nest and took my picture after an extremely loud bout of snow crunching and stooping under the spines of a Prickly Ash. The occupant was probably curled up inside and was listening in nervous silence at the approach of the bumbling camera-toting beast below.

  The beast soon retreated back to his own warm shelter and reviewed his images through fogged glasses. He was not to be seen outside again for the balance of the day.