Howling at the moon reveals coyote’s presence

As the light fades over the alfalfa field, the nighttime serenade begins with a long call, then a tremolo of howling. With all the howling and yipping it sounds like an entire pack of coyotes is calling, but I’ve learned that the serenade may only be one or two coyotes. Sometimes it sounds like they are howling in the yard but instead they are across the field. 

The night song of coyotes is the most conspicuous sign of them in an area. Their song is higher pitched than that of a wolf. Another way they differ from wolves is that coyotes run with their tail held down while wolves run with their tail up or straight out. 

A coyote’s vocalizations vary by season, time of day, lunar phase and social status in the pack. One reason coyotes howl is to signal territory boundaries to other packs. A pack of coyotes typically maintains a territory of four to eight square miles depending on the food availability, with a pack typically consisting of a mated pair with various aged offspring. Solitary coyotes (often pups and yearlings who have left the pack) don’t defend or maintain a territory. 

Coyotes are considered opportunistic feeders--they eat whatever is available. I’ve seen them pouncing for rodents in open fields (in both winter and summer) and chasing down weaker birds near a pond. One of their main food sources is carrion (dead animals), especially in winter when there is more winter-kill. When the snow is too deep to pounce for rodents or when carrion is sparse, coyotes will hunt rabbits, fish and frogs. They will also eat insects, snakes, fruit, grass, lizards, nuts, garbage and pet food. 

The versatility in their diet allows them to be highly adaptable to a wide variety of habitats. They are just as comfortable in forests, deserts and prairies as they are in suburbs, city parks and golf courses. This adaptability has allowed them to expand their range and become a common sight across most of North America.

Coyote trotting down path in a California RV park

I was surprised last winter to see a coyote stalking a flock of birds in the middle of an RV park on the outskirts of Los Angeles, California. Every morning the coyote would emerge from the thick brush along the creek and boldly trot around the park until it came upon the resident flock of waterfowl. Then it would switch into stalking mode and target a straggling bird, sometimes catching it, sometimes not. After successfully catching a meal or scaring the flock away, the coyote would trot right through the middle of the parked RV’s back to the forested creek. By nature, coyotes are fearful of humans, but they don’t seem to be fearful where they can’t be hunted. 

I was truly surprised to see a coyote in the suburbs of Los Angeles. However, it wasn’t seeing them that first clued me in to their presence but instead hearing them over the drone of traffic as the sun set over a skyline of buildings. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on September 27, 2012. 

Incredible, edible cattails

A common sight in any shallow water around the Kootenai Valley is stands of cattails. They line irrigation ditches, lake-shores, swamps and the majority of wetlands not more than four feet deep. Cattails play an important part in the wetland ecosystem in regards to both food and shelter. 

Cattails in the Kootenai Valley of Idaho

During the summer and even mild winters, red-winged blackbirds can be seen perched on cattail stems singing their familiar chorus. Both red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds build nests in the dense stands of cattails, along with marsh wrens, Canada geese and other waterfowl. In early summer, families of Canada geese with downy goslings weave in and out of the cattail stands looking for food, particularly the numerous insects that inhabit the stands. Frogs and salamanders lay eggs on the water’s surface between the cattails while below the water’s surface, fish hide and lay eggs among the roots and rhizomes.

A red-winged blackbird sings from its perch on a cattail stem

Rhizomes are the reason cattails grow in dense stands. A rhizome is an underground (or underwater) stem of a plant that grows roots downward and shoots upward. Other plants that grow via rhizomes include aspen, ginger, iris and some orchids. Like aspen, an entire acre of cattails may only contain a few individual plants. In well-established stands, cattails prevent over-population by emitting a toxin that will prevent germination of their own species. Cattails mainly reproduce by laterally expanding their rhizomes but also by fruit. 

Atop the long cattail stem is a brown, hot-dog-shaped flower that contains densely packed cattail fruit. Most of the flower is composed of white cattail “fluff” that carries the small fruit (called nutlets) away in the wind. The nutlets are only two millimeters in length but are an important food source for many insects. The “fluff” isn’t wasted either--birds will collect it in the spring to line their nests. 

A cattail flower starting to burst open

One animal that utilizes cattails for both food and shelter is the muskrat. Muskrats eat the rhizomes and stalks. They use the leaves to build their houses which in turn provides resting and nesting sites for many water birds. Through the maze of cattails other wildlife seeks cover, such as white-tailed deer, turkeys, raccoons and hundreds of insects. 

Cattails are an all-you-can-eat buffet for many species of wildlife including people. People can eat the starchy roots, young shoots, young flowering spikes and the pollen. The developing male and female flower spikes can be eaten like corn on the cob while the pollen can be collected later in the summer and used as a flour substitute in recipes such as cattail pancakes. Flour can also be made from the rhizomes. 

Native Americans used the cattail leaves to weave baskets, chair seats and mats. In large quantities, the white “fluff” can be used for insulation in pillows, diapers and clothing. 

As one of the most common wetland plants in the temperate and tropical regions of the world (except Australia and South America), the cattail is truly an incredible, edible plant. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on September 20, 2012. 

Look for spruce grouse on gravel roads this autumn

A frenzy of flapping bursts from the shrubs no more than 10 feet away, quickening my heartbeat until I realize it’s only a spruce grouse. After landing in a nearby tree, I notice the bright red eye comb of the male. The female is harder to distinguish from other female grouse species because of the overall mottled brown coloration. 

The spruce grouse’s cryptic color makes it seemingly impossible to see until you are practically stepping on it and then sometimes it won’t even fly away. Spruce grouse can often be approached extremely close, giving them the name of “fool’s hen” for not flying away and yet they amazingly survive. They supposedly fly away sooner when approached by predators other than people and just as their explosive take-off startles us, it can startle a predator long enough for the grouse to escape to safety. Predators include coyotes, great horned owls, martens, goshawks, fishers, lynx, red-tailed hawks, fox and people. 

True to the name "fool's hen", this female didn't fly off immediately

Spruce grouse can be easy targets for hunters in the fall when they frequent roads, streams and lakesides to ingest small pebbles. The pebbles help grind food in their gizzard, particularly when they switch from their summer diet of berries, leaves, seeds and fungi to their winter diet of fibrous conifer needles. 

During the winter, they solely survive on conifer needles, mainly spruce, pine, fir and larch. Their beak is specially adapted to snip off needles which are toxic and bitter to most animals because of chemicals. However, a spruce grouse’s digestive system can handle the chemicals and actually expands in size and length during the winter so that the grouse can digest the larger amount of food needed to survive the long, cold winter nights. The digestive tract grows enough to store up to ten percent of the grouse’s body weight in food. That is like a 150-pound person eating 15 pounds of food before bed every night. 

A male spruce grouse struts around displaying to nearby females in the late winter

Spruce grouse will fly out of their territory to find pebbles to aid in the digestion of all those conifer needles. Otherwise, they typically stay within their home range of 10 to 25 acres. Unlike blue grouse that group into large multi-family flocks in autumn and winter, spruce grouse tend to be less social. Females and juvenile grouse will form small flocks in winter, but the males are typically alone. The only time male spruce grouse congregate is during autumn when they join a hen and brood before going their own way for winter. 

During spring, the males will attract females to mate, but then leave the incubating and rearing to the female. Unlike the adult’s diet of leaves and berries in the summer, spruce grouse chicks will mainly eat insects during their first summer. Then in autumn, conifer needles become the mainstay of their diet. 

Despite a stable food source of conifer needles, spruce grouse can be everywhere in a patch of woods one year and the next year hardly one can be found. The reason for the periodic crashes is unknown. Abundant or not, it only takes one spruce grouse to make your heart jump when it bursts from the nearby brush. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on September 13, 2012.

Brooks Range not on the map until 1911

Two-hundred miles of flying and we only crossed one road 15 minutes into the flight. The rest of the flight was ridge after ridge of mountains in the northernmost mountain range in the United States--the Brooks Range. Every mountain range is unique and the Brooks Range is no exception. 

Central Brooks Range

Located entirely north of the Arctic Circle in the northern third of Alaska, the Brooks Range spans 700 miles from the west coast along the Bering Sea into Canada’s Yukon Territory. The Brooks Range is considered the northernmost reach of the Rocky Mountains.

Over those 700 miles east to west, only one road crosses the range at Atigun Pass--the Dalton Highway (also known as the Haul Road). In comparison, the Cascade Range is also 700 miles long but dozens of highways and Forest Service roads bisect the range. There is literally only one road that crosses the Brooks Range. The only other means of transportation across the mountains are airplanes, boats, snow-machines, dogsleds and by foot. 

The large swath of roadless mountains is primarily due to the protection of the range by Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Noatak National Preserve. 

Frigid Crags and Boreal Mountain (pictured above) form the "Gates of the Arctic"

On the aforementioned flight to Peters and Schrader Lakes from Bettles, the extensive width of the range was evident. At 150 miles wide, the Brooks Range is almost double the width of the Cascade Range (80 miles). 

Similar to the transition in the Cascade Range from coastal forest to the dry Columbia Basin, the Brooks Range transitions from boreal forest on the south side to arctic tundra on the north side. The transition zone marks the northern extent of the tree line with only a few trees (mainly Balsam poplar) crossing over the Continental Divide. The southern slopes are also the northern limit of black spruce and quaking aspen.

For being in the Arctic, the Brooks Range has surprisingly few glaciers. Even though the mountains may be covered in snow from September to June, the climate is too arid to support glacial growth. Additionally, the sun never sets for 30 days in the summer. However, during the last ice age large valley glaciers carved extensive river valleys, serrated peaks, cirques and gigantic lakes. 

Summit Lake just north of the Continental Divide

The remoteness of the entire range eluded mapmakers for decades. When the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the now-named Brooks Range was a blank spot on the map. Not until the 1880’s and 1890’s did mapping begin by Navy expeditions, the Revenue Marine Service (now the Coast Guard) and gold prospectors. The entire Brooks Range was completely mapped by 1911 but wasn’t named until 1925 (after Alfred Brooks, chief USGS geologist for Alaska from 1903 to 1924). 

Even one-hundred years after it was mapped, there is still debate on the highest peak. Some sources claim Mount Chamberlin to be the highest peak at 9020 feet while others claim Mount Isto to be the highest at 9060 feet. One thing is for certain, the Brooks Range is like no other. 

Mount Doonerak and the North Fork of the Koyukuk River

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on September 6, 2012.