Beaver Fever

Today while walking through Gothic "town", I got word that a fox was eating one of our marmots. So I immediately ran over and find the fox with a huge...marmot??? in its mouth.

Well, it looked like a really odd-shaped marmot because this thing had a huge leather flap flopping around. The fox was chomping on half of a beaver! This was a really interesting/perplexing sighting because foxes weigh about 10 kilograms at the most while that beaver was probably 20 kilos. So I really doubt the fox was able to hunt the beaver, and it is a mystery to me how she got hold of this enormous rodent lunch. Let's have a moment of silence for the beaver...and a little praise that it wasn't one of our study animals. I need those data!

Also, yes, this is probably the same fox Lilah took a picture of a while back. Foxes are generally found in monogamous pairs that occupy the same territory, so for a while I couldn't tell them apart. But after several sightings and photos of these guys, I am pretty confident that this is the female. I also think she is currently nursing kits because she passed so close to my cabin the other day that I actually saw her swollen nipples (see photo below). Geez have some decency, you vixen!

 

 

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Wake up marmots!

Blogger: Lilah Hubbard

It’s that time again! Last week, four of us early-season researchers skied 3.7 miles into our field station, the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), to record when the marmots emerge from hibernation. Although the weather over the last few weeks was showing signs for an early spring, we arrived to Colorado just as a huge storm rolled through, dropping up to 13 inches of fresh snow in just one day. The local residents (people and wildlife) of Gothic, Colorado were getting excited about the snow melting and temperatures increasing, but it turns out that Punxsutawney Phil may have predicted correctly: winter may not be over quite yet!

 

As a first-time early-seasoner coming from sunny Los Angeles, I’m pretty excited that the snow is still here and we get to ski around for a while. Yesterday we went up valley to one of our field sites and, using our spotting scopes, we detected 4 yearlings and 2 adults out and about in the snow! One of the yearling marmots, referred to as “Danger” since it has a fur mark of a warning sign, seemed especially excited to run around in the snow and refused to follow her siblings back into the burrow when it started to snow again (I guess the “Danger” fur mark was appropriate)! 

But researchers aren’t the only ones keeping an eye out for marmots… there are a variety of predators in the valley too! Yesterday morning, we saw a hawk circling the field site we were observing. Then, in the afternoon, one of our team members spotted a red fox hanging out near our cabin. After exploring the area for a while, the fox suddenly darted across the road and up onto a huge snow pile. After a few seconds of digging, we realized it was uncovering a secret stash of mice! It munched out on a couple mice right in front of us, and then continued on its way. Who knew that the snow outside our cabin was also a freezer for a fox’s meal?!

 No signs of woken marmots at our other field sites yet, but stay tuned for more updates!

The circle of life...

The winter has been so long this year and emergence of a lot of species has been delayed. As researchers, we have to deal with this by just sitting in the snow for long periods waiting for our study animals to emerge. While observing we can just have a granola bar if we get hungry, but what about predators if their prey are not around?

Photo by Rebecca Richardson

This is the story of the coyote that lives in our study area. When we arrived, he was in good shape, very active looking for something to eat, but as the time has passed, this coyote was getting more and more skinny.

This was the early June, the marmots were out and the coyote very hungry. We had some new individuals down valley that we have been observing carefully and waiting for the right time to start trapping to give them a name and a mark. Unfortunately, this is not going to happen to the small one.

It was this morning when all of marmots were sitting just next to their burrows when one marmot met some misfortune. He was in middle of nowhere when he met face to face with the coyote!

The marmot fight against the coyote is depicted below. I am sure the coyote got bitten by the marmot, but this was not enough of a fight for this marmot to escape from a starving coyote.

Photo: Adriana Maldonado

After handling the marmot for about 30 minutes, the coyote left the site, but the other marmots just stayed safely inside their burrows and the morning went so slowly after this incident.

To read more about coyotes, check out the wikipedia...

Amazing Nature

While observing the behavior of marmots, we get the chance to see all kinds of wild animals such as porcupines, woodpeckers, robins, chipmunks, ground squirrels, foxes, coyotes... but if you are very lucky... amazing bears!

I was doing my observations as I do every day, but on this particular morning, the marmots were just flagging their tails and sitting next to their burrows. Marmots are very vigilant but even if they are just laying on their bellies, they are aware of all what is going on around them.

Suddenly all of the marmots were starring at one same point, I was wondering...what are they looking at? and I told myself to look-up because there might be something big around!

This was the first time I had ever seen a wild bear, but more amazingly, it was a mommy with her three cute and big cubs walking just by the other side of the river! I was so excited that I could barely grab my camera. But I did it! and so, this is the proof of what I saw:

Photo: Adriana Maldonado

Bears are usually vegetarian, but they also eat small mammals. I have yet to see a bear eat a marmot, but Dirk Van Vuren, another researcher here at RMBL, found that predation accounts for 98 % of mortality during a marmots active season (spring, summer & fall) and that bears are on list of predators; anyway, the marmots I was watching didn't seem to be afraid of these bears--but perhaps they should have been!

Underground Cafe: Are the Badgers Back?

This news is just in from our field correspondent, Billy Barr. Billy lives at RMBL year round and keeps the fieldsite up and running regardless of how much snow and ice the weather brings!

Billy writes, "I came to the office this morning and saw this- quite a substantial digging of the marmot hole next to Johnson Lab. I doubt it got any marmot but there was quite the big pile of debris from the hole the fox dug. If we still had badgers here anymore, then I would think the marmot would be in trouble, but not from a fox as I assume they are unable to dig holes that are deep enough."

Apparently, when the marmoteers are away, the predators will play...

The hole looks pretty deep indeed. Could a fox have done this? Could it be that badgers are in fact be back in town? The jury is still out and we need your help, so please post a comment.

Read more about these carnivores on-line at the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity Website.

Photo Credit: US Fish & Wildlife Service

Clever as a fox?

I visited the RMBL field site for the first time this summer and was taking a look around late one morning after we had finished our marmot research. During my walk, I encountered a fox very intently focused on something. In fact, that fox was sitting on the porch of one of the cabins that the researchers stay in!



A closer look revealed to me that this clever fox was watching one of our marmots! He was sitting very quietly just like a dog on his best behavior waiting for a treat. However, this member of the family Canidae was waiting to snack on a marmot. Panning out on the image below, you can see that this fox had learned the location of this marmot's burrow and was waiting patiently for the marmot to come out.

However, marmots are excellent at detecting predators and this marmot, just like me, had seen the fox. The marmot responded by quickly seeking cover and lived to see yet another day at RMBL. Predators and their prey are constantly evolving new ways to "outwit" each other. This leads to what us biologists call an "evolutionary arms-race." In this race, at least on this day, the marmot has won. Perhaps we should change the phrase, "clever as a fox" to "clever as a marmot"!

Go! Get! Yip! Ahhh! Predator!

It's a bit hard to make out in the picture above, but it's there, a running marmot. The marmot is indeed being chased by a researcher, this is literally science in action. So why are we chasing marmots? Well, we are measuring how fast they run. Research in our lab focuses on antipredator behavior, and running speed is therefore a trait of interest. Antipredator behavior simply refers to marmots' strategies for escaping or avoiding other animals that want to eat them. So, an animal's ability to quickly accelerate and outrun a predator is extremely important.

To measure running speed, we chase marmots and time them over a fixed distance. We also note things like incline, substrate (grass, rock, sand, etc.), and vegetation height, as these variables may influence the marmot's speed. As we chase them, we yell, shout, and sometimes flail our limbs to scare them. Each researcher has their own particular call (see title for some examples), but I am a particular fan of "run marmot run". Though it seems silly, it is necessary to mimic an intense predation situation so that marmots run as fast as they can.

Remember your P.E. class? Every week you were required to run a lap around the track while your teacher timed you. Now imagine a giant was chasing you while screaming and waving his arms. I bet you'd run a little faster, right? We're interested in MAXIMUM running speed, not jogging speed or leisurely stroll speed. So the chasing and hollering is indeed necessary for accurate data collection. Plus, it's hilarious to watch your colleague, professor, or field assistant try to outrun a marmot.

Bear!

Yes. That's right. Bear! A big one! A bear recently broke into the dining hall. It was looking for food and obviously did not check the schedule. If it had bothered to look up the meal plan online, it would have noticed that the dining hall doesn't open for quite sometime and there isn't much to eat right now besides pots and pans. But in all seriousness, RMBL has had a rather large bear problem over the past years. During the summer of 2009, bears repeatedly broke into the dining hall as well as several cabins. In fact, a marmot field assistant was interrupted from a peaceful sleep by this particularly frightening brand of intruder. Thankfully, there have been no injuries and the bears typically retreat once they are spotted and chased. However, this conflict between researchers and wildlife is of great concern.

According to the Colorado Division of Wildlife "Bears that become aggressive in their pursuit of an easy meal must often be destroyed." At RMBL, we therefore take every precaution to keep bears wild and deter them from thinking that are cabins and dining hall are part of the buffet line. It's their wilderness and we are simply visitors, so it is our responsibility to prevent encounters wherever possible. The dining hall staff has posted signs on the kitchen door stating "No bears allowed". And in case the bears are illiterate, the rest of us will properly dispose of our trash and appropriately manage our food storage.

Click here for more information on bears in Colorado and living with bears.