April 01, 2004 - Surviving the last snowstormThe Suffolk Times • April 1, 2004
• •
Surviving
the last snowstorm
Times /Review photos by Paul Stoutenburg
Above: At Orient Beach State Park a great horned owl borrowed the platform
nest of an osprey. As the owl is such an early nester, it was probably finished
raising its family by the time the osprey returned. Right: This picture was take)
in the '50s over at North Sea. The nest was 40 feet up in an oak tree. It shows
how early the great horned owl nests, as the trees were still in winter's grip.
This can be dangerous work, for the owls are very protective of their young.
THE LATE SNOWS WE had this wince
got me to wondering how our local
wildlife is able to survive. Some do
very well — for others, it's a disaster.
The great horned owls are already sit
ting on their eggs and possibly some
have young. Can you imagine
the female sitting on a bor-
owed nest with the snow
,oming down all around her?
say a "borrowed nest”
oecause owls don't build
ests; they use the old nest of
crow or hawk to lay their
ggs and raise their young.
le saw proof of this a few
.ars back when a great horned owl
ok over the platform nest of an
prey at Orient Beach State Park.
To keep her eggs warm, the owl
trts her feathers so the eggs come in
rect contact with her warm body.
ost birds do this, as a matter of fact.
you look closely during the nesting
ason you'll see this "incubation,
itch" on many birds. It's nothing
ore than a visible line on the breast
' the bird showing where the feathers
are spread. The young of the great
)rued owl will usually survive
;cause, no matter what time of year
is — January, February or March —
e adults can always find a rabbit, rat,
ouse or sleeving bird that can be
FOGUS
ON
NATURE
by Paul
Stoutenburgh
snatched for a meal by these tigers of
the night.
Proof that the owl nests early can be
seen in the photograph above, where
the young are almost fully grown and
the trees have not yet leafed out. Here
the young are about to be
banded. The nest was in a
tall oak tree and, as a climax
to my photographing these
owls, my camera slipped anc
fell 40 feet to the ground
below.
Our local gray squirrels
are probably pregnant by
this time. We know of one
female in particular that's probably all
curled up in the warmth of the cavity
nest in our old cherry tree. When the
weather is too severe, other squirrels
will sleep in a sort of semi - dormant
state in their leaf nests high in the
treetops. There they will stay until the
winter weather passes; then it's back
to find the nuts they hid last year. The
young are born naked and will stay in
the nest to be nursed by the mother.
When the buds come out on the trees,
it's time for the young to leave the
nest and try their first solid food, ten-
der leaf buds. Everything in the natu-
ral world has its time and place to
play out its part in the scheme of
Sharp eyes can find where the squir
rels have dug up their buried prizes,
and even sharper eyes can probably
find the place where they sat and
enjoyed their nuts, leaving all the
empty shells and husks on the ground.
To watch them in the treetops, one
would think it impossible for them to
be that casual about moving around
so high up — and there are accidents.
I remember years ago one fell out of
tree near where I was standing and
made an awful thump when it hit the
ground. The fall didn't seem to faze it
one bit as it scurried off and soon
headed up another tree.
When I think of the snow and how
it cuts down our visibility and activi-
ties, I wonder how the ospreys that
returned so early this year and wer
caught in the late snow
will be able to make it.
How can they survive
when we have cloudy
days, high winds, and
sometimes even snow?
How can they possibly find a fish to
catch when the weather turns so bad?
Our only hope is that they had good
fishing on their way north so that they
carry a healthy supply of fat to hold
them through the hard times of unpre
dictable snows and wind and cold.
Some surely fall by the wayside. I
`Everything in the
natural world has its
time and ulace...'
saw a chilling example of this when I
went up back to feed the cows. I
opened the door, and there on the
ground before me lay a dead fox. I
was a bit taken back. Evidently it had
crawled in under the door and, proba-
bly because of malnutrition, it just lay
down and died. I couldn't believe my
eyes. It was not a healthy fox. Could it
be it had mange, and therefore had
spent most of its time scratching and
rolling, trying to rid itself of the devil-
ish mites that irritated it so much that
food became unimportant and it
starved? No one will ever know, but
there it was, stretched out on the floor,
a victim of winter's harshness.
Before the snow a walk in the wet
woods would have shown the skunk
cabba a coming up through the
frozen ground. It has
that ability, you know,
to warm the ground
and poke through ear-
lier than other plants. It
already has a ower on
it m t e form of a large bud-like struc-
ture with tiny blossoms. The fast
insects to fly pollinate these. But all
this had to wait until the last snow
melted. Then, when it gets warmer
and insects start to fly again, the
skunk cabbage can take up its job of
producing seeds for the future.
What about the mourning cloak but-
terfly we spoke of a few weeks ago?
On warm days it.came out and flitted
about as if it were spring. They know
how to survive. When the cold returns
they just slip back under the bark of a
tree or hide in some secluded spot,
where they wait out the winter and
hope for a warmer day when they can
once more dance on the wind.
So much is going on that we don't
see. The lowly salamander has crawled
out of its protective hiding place and
found its way to a vernal pond and -
laid its eggs. Once again cold weather
came and ice covered the pond. The
jelly mass of salamander eggs will
hold on until the weather again warms
up so they can continue to mature.
Knowledge of the natural world is a
must if we are to be good stewards of