Squirrel Hunt '10

The tradition of Eastern gray squirrel hunting, like most hunting traditions, most likely arose out of necessity. Also, it seems, it arose out of frustration. According an Appalachian history blog I stumbled upon, two men camped in Dickenson County, VA to hunt big game, but had no luck so they went after squirrels. They mockingly named the area "Squirrel Camp," a name which it is still referred to this day.

In these modern times, hunting for sustenance has largely been replaced for hunting for a trophy such as antlers. Additionally, not hunting out of necessity has help lead to the rise of the ethical sportsman. The ethical sportsman sees hunting as a way to connect and as a to establish a relationship with the land. The ethical sportsman is not hunting just for food. Indeed, if one is hunting to fulfill such a basic need as survival, one would probably, in this desperate state, resort to tactics we could not consider ethical. For me, the main qualifier of an ethical sportsman is a sincere attempt to understand and respect the interconnected wilderness where he hunts. The ethical sportsman researches his prey, and by doing so, sees the beauty in the animal. The ethical sportsman is essentially an amateur biologist, exploring and questioning what he sees around him.

Since squirrels do not make good trophies, I propose that, for the most part, it takes an ethical sportsman to hunt this noble rodent. (Really, I think that the previous paragraph was a way to justify why I went Eastern gray squirrel hunting up in the North Georgia mountains. At least it helps me feel better.)

Also, it's pretty dang fun! My buddy has a Parnell's Carolina cur, which is a breed of dog from the mountains of North Carolina that has squirrel hunting in his blood, and I have never seen a dog with more energy than ol' Blaze. Even when this dog is asleep you can see him experiencing REM in which his large eyes search back and forth underneath his eyelids, and periodically his body tenses up as he lets out a low growl at the undoubtedly terrified imaginary rodent.

The basic strategy is simple. Let Blaze loose (equipped with a radio collar in case you have trouble relocating him) within a legal hunting area, such as a national forest, and when you hear him talking,  hurry to that tree and look for a squirrel. Unfortunately, the day I went, the weather was poor, the squirrels weren't moving, there was some bad alignment of the planets, and we saw no squirrels. Blaze treed a couple times, and I know that his nose was not lying. I blame our poor human senses to the inability to find our prey, and I know it pissed Blaze off.

I know that some folks will laugh at our inability to find this common creature that populates most neighborhoods and college campuses is unnervingly large numbers, and I laugh with them, but have they ever tried it? It's not as easy as it sounds. Trekking up and down steep hillsides trying to keep up with Blaze was exhausting, but it was a fun experience, and I hope to do it again.

Plus, I got to see Hutch's Museum of Natural History, which is what I have decided to call his impressive display of specimens including a wood duck, fox squirrels, and a woodcock in his small, smokey apartment.

He also owns a variety of beautifully handcrafted handmade turkey calls, one of which is engraved with a Red-cockaded Woodpecker.  This type of call is a wing bone call.  The larger bone of the call is the humerus of a turkey hen, and the smaller bone is made from the ulna.  There are different variations, and one of Hutch's wing bone calls actually uses a deer antler as partial replacement for the humerus.  Another replacement could be the hollowed out brass tube from a shotgun shell.



The other calls include a box call and a friction call.  The box call is a wooden box with a pivoting lid on top. When the wood of the lid rubs against the rest of the box, it produces the noise of a hen.  The friction call, which may be the most common, consists of a round pad made from slate, aluminum, or even glass where one rubs it with a "striker."  Each of these calls are used to imitate a hen for the purpose of luring in a gobbler (male turkey) within range.

All in all it was a great weekend trip, and probably the last hunting trip I make until Turkey season, so those of you who think my blog is becoming too redneck can rest assured that I will be returning to birding posts soon enough.

View from the tree stand

It all happened so fast...sort of.

I had been sitting in the deer stand for two and a half hours, and I had already seen a fawn and two yearling "spike" bucks, which are young bucks with only two small spikes for antlers.  They were certainly fun to watch and one of the spike bucks got so close that, if I were inclined, I could have dramatically lept from my tree stand, jumped on his back, and ridden him back to the house.  But I decided against that.

There is a big controversy surrounding spike bucks.  Some believe that yearlings with spikes are genetically inferior compared to yearlings with three or more total antler points, and if this is the case, then it may be argued that these bucks should be culled in order to prevent them from passing on their genes to the rest of the herd.  However, a study conducted on wild bucks in South Texas indicates that bucks having spikes their first year may be more a result of environmental conditions than genetic conditions, and, if allowed to mature, spike bucks can have just as high quality antlers as higher point yearlings.  In fact, in another study, the majority of yearlings in the study area were spike bucks one year.  Thus, if a manager adopts an aggressive spike culling policy, they could wipe out many individuals that could have been high quality deer given another year or two to mature.

But I digress...as a steady drizzle started, a doe came splashing though the bottomland hardwood forest.  I was able to field identify her as a doe based on longer nose and larger size compared to a fawn.  This is an important distinction so late in the season as the fawns are getting older and have lost their identifiable speckled coat (great for non-mobile fawns) for a more solid-color adult coat better at camouflaging today's deer on the go.  She was by herself, so if she had given birth to fawns the past breeding season, they were now independent.  Since she was in such a hurry, I decided to wait a while to see if a buck was following her in hot pursuit.

So I waited, and waited, and waited until the doe walked within 10 yards of my stand and then about 35 yards out opposite the direction in which she came.  It was becoming apparent that I was not going to see a buck and that this doe, a beautiful looking whitetail, may be my only chance, and that's when the adrenaline started flowing.  I knew I could not take the shot free handed in my excited state, and I knew that if I hesitated too much longer, she might smell me and take off.  So I quickly knelt on the floor of the homemade stand, propped my left shoulder on wooden board I had been sitting on, propped my rifle on the board that made up one of the walls of the stand, and took the shot.  She stumbled for about 3 seconds, then laid still.

It was one of the strangest feelings I have felt, and as I write, my fingers begin to tremble with memory.  I imagine it is close to the feeling a cowboy out in Wyoming bar explained to me.  He traveled with the herd, and told my friend and I stories of individual cows like someone may tell you funny stories of their domestic pets or young children.  He loved his cows, and his fond recollection was a testament to this.  After one particular story that made him laugh uncontrollably, his demeanor grew solemn.  He said, "But they're gone now.  That is why I am in town: to sell these cows."  He loved his cows, but he knew he was raising them to their death so that he can make a living that literally satisfies the appetites of others.  I don't think anyone, especially myself, has such a connection to the origins of their food.

It is only natural that in this age of specialization, we have lost this connection to our source of nutrition.  Even those of us who don't eat meat, like I did for 5 years, most likely consume genetically modified plants laced with chemicals, and planted in monoculture field devoid of native flora and fauna.  But in that moment, I truly knew where at least a portion of my life sustaining nutrition was coming from in its purist, most organic form.

Some people have the stupid idea that killing a deer "makes you more of man" as if killing an animal proves mankind's ability and right to dominate all other life on the planet because our opposable thumbs have created tools that can blast away anything that stands in our way.  I can truthfully say I have no idea where this notion comes from.  It is true that killing that doe was exciting, but it was also extremely humbling, and as I drug the 105-pound deer through the soggy hardwood forest, I had never had more love and respect for my food and the environment that sustains it.

Bachman's Sparrow netting

I’ve been meaning to write about my experience with netting Bachman’s Sparrows  as part of a long term research program developed at Tall Timbers Research Station for some time, but as the field season wound down, the data analysis season wound up.  Now, as the threat of snow looms over horrified Georgians, I long for those humid summer days in the field.

On the morning before I left Tall Timbers for the season I had the opportunity to tag along for mist netting as I have never seen before.  The morning was unseasonably cool (and by cool I mean only mid 80s) as we bounced along the Redland dirt roads in an ATV, golf cart, and truck hybrid known as “the gator.”  When we arrived at our predetermined destination, we cut off the gas and pumped up some Bachman’s Sparrow jams in the hopes of tricking a jealous male into responding.  After a couple of unsuccessful tries, we finally heard the wispy call of an angry male responding to our playback.

That is when we sprang into action.  Since I had never done this before I obediently awaited my orders.  Luckily, those were to “stay put for now.”  I watched as my friends assembled two 20ft mist nets in less than 30secs in front of the singing bird.  Then they ran a big circle wide enough not to scare the bird, and slowly started to approach our undeniably confused feathered friend from behind.  To escape a threat, Bachman’s Sparrows will leap up, fly just above the understory in a longleaf pine forest, and fall back down.  In a long leaf pine forest, most of the plant diversity is found within 4ft of the ground, and in places that have not been recently burned.  This can be like wading though a prickly, shrubby ocean.  This is especially hard for ill-adapted humans, but great cover for a highly evolved Bachman’s Sparrow.  Despite this, the crew was successful many times in rounding up these often heard, rarely seen gems.

 I have trouble with identifying sparrows.  Most sparrows in Georgia are here in the winter and do not sing, making identification by sound practically impossible.  This combined with the fact that most of the time I only seem to get a 1/8 of a second chance to look at one before it lifts it’s middle feather up in the air and shouts “screw you!” makes sparrows especially frustrating to me and many other birders. 

But this opportunity to see a Bachman’s Sparrow up close redeemed the sparrow clan in my eyes.  In one feather I could see an earth tone rainbow of colors impossible to perceive though binoculars or a scope.  This is certainly the reason why sparrows are able to hide themselves so well from predators and well-intended birders alike.  Golden amber fades into yellow, fades into steel blue, and fades into white all within less than half a square inch of space. 

Before, I appreciated these birds for their rarity.  They are rare because long leaf pine forests are rare.  They evolved with burning forests, and when people suppressed forest fires, their habitat declined.  But now, with managed forests like those around Tall Timbers research station, they luckily have a place to live.

Now, after I have seen one in the hand, I appreciate them for their beauty.  It’s the type of beauty that I imagine would make more people become advocates for Long Leaf restoration, but that’s the idealist in me talking, not the rationalist.

Alabama hunting trip

On a chilly overcast afternoon I climbed a metal latter extending about 25 feet up an oak tree to a padded camouflaged seat.  I slung my bolt action Remington rifle off my back and lower a padded metal bar across my chest.  The tree stand on private land  in the transition zone between the Alabamian upland Piedmont and the east gulf coastal plain provided me a commanding view of an elongated food plot with a field of planted loblolly pines to my left, and a relatively young hardwood forest to my right.  I was covered, virtually, head to toe with with high tech, real tree, HD, hardwoods camouflage, and I suspect that once I made it my goal to sit as still as possible, whitetail deer would not be able see me.  However, I came across an article published by the Quality Deer Management Association that indicates that all this high tech cammo may be all for naught if treated with UV enhancing dyes used to make garments slightly brighter to the human eye in the hopes of more sales.   Deer lack UV filters that we humans have which allow them to see the tail end of the UV spectrum.  Therefore, my new cammo pants could literally appear to be glowing to a vigilant whitetail.  Interesting, but I didn't know this at the time, so there I sat as still as possible. 

Before I left for this trip, it was mentioned to me by a friend of mine who just returned from his first hunting trip that deer hunting was "boring until you hear leaves rustling, but then you realize that it's a squirrel, then it's boring again."  Having been hunting a few times before this current trip, I could not disagree more.  After I nestled into my perch, the woods were quite.  This was most likely the result of me scaring everything off by my boisterous tromping up to the stand which sounded like the Macy's day parade compared to the noise that evolved prey animals make while conducting their daily business of trying to find food without being food.  But soon the soft fluttering of wings altered me to the presence of unknown avian critters.  Soft knocking against wood told me that woodpeckers were out looking for breakfast.  And a piercing squeal told me that Northern Flickers were the ones looking to grub out.  Later, a Red-shouldered Hawk lit in a hickory next to my stand.  A  2-year old Wild Turkey quietly crept onto the plot fed for a moment and moved back into cover.  I even saw a older looking doe, but a fawn was still with her, so I watched the mother take her time browsing on the plot while the hyperactive kid bounced around.

This is what I enjoy most about my few hunting experiences.  I love getting out in the woods at a time when it seems most folks are either sleeping or indoors by a heater.  I love seeing the woods with its vulnerable trees with branches that exhibit the juxtaposition of chaos and order in a display of fractal geometry that inspired Pollock.  I love sitting so quietly that rapid, sporadic, wing beats of a Carolina Wren are the loudest sound in the woods, and when he flips fallen leaves in search of meal, the sound becomes defining.  I love being invisible to the gray squirrels that bound from tree trunk to tree trunk frantically searching for hidden nuts and seeds in a ritual that goes unnoticed by most.  Boring indeed!  This is what I love, and if an old buck or doe happens walk by my cross hairs, I will thank God for the opportunity to put meat in the freezer and take the shot; I haven't done so yet.

Lost nests

I returned from Tall timbers Research Station to check up on some Athens area shrikes to find two shrike nests we have been monitoring on the ground with no sign of eggs or young.

One site had no sign of shrikes at all, but at the other site, just as I was about to leave thinking those birds were gone too, I saw a shrike light on telephone wire where I have seen the adults hunt. I quickly got out my spotting scope to see if it was the adult bird I had tagged for the purpose of monitoring its movements, but was happy to see that it was one of the juveniles from the adult pair's previous clutch.

No doubt this bird was one of the two that I have seen begging for food from the adults in some of my previous visits to this spot. When I left for Tall Timbers last week, this bird was not hunting for itself and relied on the good graces of it's parents for nourishment to keep it alive, but now it was actively hunting on it's own, snatching grasshoppers out of the air; curiously eyeballing deft barn swallows as they swooped in to investigate the tiny raptor.

I watched this hatch-year bird for an hour in the hopes that it's parents or sibling would join him/her, but to no avail. Since their second nests failed, did the adults disperse to another location? What about the juvenile? Did he relocate as well?

I'd like to think that is all that happened; the birds just moved to greener pastures, but the pessimist in me tells me they are dead. This, realistically, could be the case. This would mean that this lone juvenile is the survivor.

Part of me wants me to trap this juvenile, put a radio tag on him, and see where it goes. Will it stay in this area since the parents are gone? I mean, at least one successful brood was raised in this habitat.

As I watched the once incapable and now lonely bird hunt, I think that I will opt to not harass him. What if he injures himself in the trap? What if the color bands I put on him attracts a predator? What if his band get tangled in a mess of thorns? It hasn't happened to any birds I have banded to my knowledge, but what if it happens to him? I started to think of a million things that could go wrong and soon I became overwhelmed.

At that point I could never think of touching that bird. I began to think that just by watching him he might erupt in a burst of flames and it would, of course, be my fault.

No, I will not mess with this bird, but I will come back to see if he's still around knowing that some time soon, I will arrive at the site and he will be gone. Then, I will silence the pessimist and imagine this bird raising a next generation of shrikes.
Shrike nest with eggs

Same nest abandoned (bottle cap for scale)
I didn't get a picture of the juvenile bird... but here's some nestlings from Tall Timbers!

Shrike Radio tagging

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Things have been pretty busy. I have officially begun my field season and I have not had a spare moment.

As I write, the sun is beginning to set here at Tall Timbers Research station. The purpose of my trip down here is to track previously radio tagged birds that inhabit these beautiful Longleaf pine forests in order to see how much open pine habitat Loggerhead Shrikes need.

My other study site is in the rural areas surrounding Athens, GA. I have radio tagged birds there as well and am driving back and forth between Tall Timbers and Athens every other week to track birds.

With the help of Hutch, a Tall Timbers summer intern. We are starting to get enough data at Tall Timbers to really start to see how much space these birds need. Similarly, with the help of Brady, Bobby, Lindsay, Brent, and Kathryn (all of which are volunteers) we have gathered similar data for the Athens area.

Already, we are starting to see some interesting results. For instance, all the pairs we are monitoring around Athens, are provisioning 2 or less juveniles, while on Tall Timbers, all pairs with young have 4 or 5 juveniles that they are tending to. While the sample size is still small, this will be something worth exploring later on.

More information can be found by following this link to the latest Tall Timbers e-news bird notes:

http://www.talltimbers.org/ttnews/news.cfm?news_id=121

What is the reason for this? Do the pine "barrens" truly offer better quality habitat than agricultural fields? Hopefully, when all is said and done, we will have an idea....
Radio tagged bird in Athens


Impaled Carolina Wren


Radio tagged shrike on the Wade Tract

Cammo-clad Shrike ninja, aka Hutch

Stable Isotopes and Shrikes

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Some new developments have come up in my research. What started out as a peripheral interest to my project is quickly taking more precedent.

Stable isotope analysis is an ever-changing and ever-growing technique that combines basic ecological concepts with relatively simple chemistry. Before I completely confuse whoever may read this, you may want to check out this site (http://www.uga.edu/~sisbl/stable.html) for a brief introduction to what stable isotope analysis is all about.

The first, and most basic concept that stable isotope analysis draws upon is that everything is interconnected in an ecosystem (and in a larger sense: the entire planet). One may think of a large web in which each strand is connected to adjacent strands. Remove or distort one of these strands, and the structural integrity of the whole web is effected. Moving on.

Every living thing has some atoms in common, i.e. every living thing incorporates carbon and nitrogen atoms into their living tissues. These atoms exist in different forms, called isotopes. What differentiates these forms of the same atom is not their function, but their weight. For example, most carbon has 6 neutrons, 6 protons, and 6 electrons. Since electrons do not contribute to the atomic weight of an atom, this typical carbon molecule can be said to have an atomic weight of the 6 protons plus the 6 neutrons, which sums to 12. But if you were to look up the atomic weight of a carbon atom in the periodic table, you would see that the listed atomic weight was 12.011. This is because carbon can exist as heavier and lighter isotopes. For example, there is one carbon isotope that consists of 7 neutrons, 6 protons, and 6 electrons, giving that atom the atomic weight of 13, but it still retains all the properties of a carbon atom. Therefore we call this isotope C13. The 12.011 atomic weight that you see in the periodic table is a function of the natural abundance of not just the 'normal' carbon with the atomic weight of 12, but also of all the carbon in the environment that exists in heavier (or lighter) isotopes. Whew.

Now, when any living thing (the predator) eats something else (the prey), the isotopes in the prey move up the food chain into that predators living tissue. The interesting thing is that the lighter isotopes are selected to run that predators various metabolic processes, while the heavier isotopes, like C13, remain sequestered in the predators living tissues. If this predator is consumed by something else, then these heavier isotopes bioaccumulate up the food chain. So if C13 concentrations increase as they move higher up in the food chain, then by analyzing this concentration of C13 of various organisms in an ecosystem, someone could see who was on top of the food chain, who was on the bottom, and any organism in between.

Lucky for us, there is a machine that can analyze these heavy isotopes! These measurements of the relative amount of heavy isotopes in an organisms living tissue are called isotopic signatures.

But wait! That's not all! Depending on how the plants photosynthesize in an ecosystem, the concentration of heavy isotopes, thus the isotopic signatures, differentiates. For example, marsh plants photosynthesize differently than most other plants (which is another topic for a another time). Thus all the organisms that use the mash will have a unique 'marsh' isotopic signature while organisms inland will have a different isotopic signature and so forth.

So what does this have to do with shrikes? Well, it may help answer the question on whether or not we have the endangered migratory subspecies L. l. migrans wintering here in Georgia. In Georgia, shrikes live in many habitats including agricultural fields, open pine forests, and even on the coast. If you were to collect a feather from a shrike that was grown in each of these ecosystems, you would presumably get different isotopic signatures for each habitat type. Now feathers are neat because they 'freeze' the isotopic signature of wherever that feather was grown. So if a feather was grown in an inland breeding ground, but then that bird moved and grew more feathers on a coastal wintering ground then those two feather types grown in different habitats should have different isotopic signatures. If you get two distinct isotopic signatures from two different feathers from ONE bird, then that bird must have migrated between its breeding and wintering grounds, i.e. there is a strong chance that this bird may be L. l. migrans!

This is just one application of stable isotope analysis in ecological research, but I figured I have bored you enough already (if you have managed to stay with me for this long).... So here are some pictures of Loggerhead Shrikes from my latest outing around Athens, GA! Special thanks to Vanessa and DeeAnne for helping on that frigid day!