A great place to call home

Twilight was quickly fading as we drove south on Highway 95 after crossing the border at Eastport. As we descended down the hill by Brush Lake, there was just enough twilight left to see the view I had been waiting for--the Selkirk Mountains over the Kootenai Valley. 

Kootenai Valley view looking south

Even though I could only make out the major features in the fading light, the view is etched in my mind from descending the hill many times. The tree-covered slopes of Trout Creek and Ball Creek stand above the patchwork of fields in the valley. The north bench a checkerboard of fields, forests and homesites. 

Kootenai Valley view looking north

After being away for seven months in Alaska, I realized how much I take for granted in Boundary County--the wildlife, the trees and the land. After only seeing three animals bigger than a snowshoe hare all summer (lynx, caribou and black bear each once), I’m looking forward to deer and turkeys walking through my yard, watching elk herds and coyotes in the fields, and finding moose browsing up Myrtle Creek. I take for granted the variety and abundance of our big game animals. I enjoy seeing the tracks of the more elusive critters of the mountains--cougars, marten, bobcat and lynx, to name a few--because I know that if I spend enough time outside I will eventually see the animal itself. 

Selkirk Mountains and Kootenai Valley from Tungsten Mountain (looking west)

Even during a short walk in the woods, I hear the nasally twang of a nuthatch, the piercing scream of an eagle overhead or the funny call of the pileated woodpecker. The woods are filled with so many sounds that I often don’t pay attention to, including the wind blowing through the towering pine trees.

Oh, how nice it is to see trees larger than six inches across and 20 feet tall. As we drove from Alaska to Idaho, I could see the progression of increasing tree height and variety. The short black and white spruce of the boreal forest slowly grew taller and then started to include tamarack (which later changed to larch). Then farther down the road came the lodgepole pine, then hemlock and cedar, and then Douglas fir. Only after passing through Radium Hot Springs did the ponderosa pine appear along with one of my favorite things about autumn--hillsides covered in a mosaic of green and gold. Larch make autumn colorful when the forests are dominated by conifers. 

From alpine fir to yew, the land here supports a diverse array of trees. When looking along the edge of a field, the assortment of trees is evident in shape and color, with each conifer having its own shade of green (and yellow in the fall for the larch). 

Looking north over the Kootenai Valley from Clifty Mountain

When overlooking the valley, the combination of forests with logging, open fields with tractors, pastures with grazing livestock and horses, and the meandering Kootenai River make the view complete. I’m glad to be home. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on October 25, 2012. 

Camouflage a means of survival

I catch a slight movement out of the corner of my eye and stop to scan the brushy slope. After a few seconds I spy a ruffed grouse with its head held high next to a birch tree. If the grouse hadn’t twitched I would have walked right past, like so many other times. 

While animals don’t have printed patterns of needles, leaves and grass on them like hunters do, they have various techniques that camouflage them in their habitat. 

A snowshoe hare molting from white to brown in the spring

Ptarmigan, snowshoe hares and some weasels trade in their brown summer coat/plumage for a snow white coat that allows them to go undetected against the snowy winter landscape unless there is a late winter or early spring. Then these white creatures will stand out against the brown landscape like a beacon in the dark.

Can you find the ptarmigan?

White-tailed deer also change color with the season but not to the extent of snowshoe hares. During winter, white-tailed deer have a grayish-brown coat to help them blend in with the dead grass and drab colors of the leafless forest. Come summer, their coats will turn a tan to reddish-brown color. 

In addition to color, markings help camouflage an animal. White-tailed deer fawns are born tan to reddish-brown like their mothers, but they also have white spots. These spots are highly visible in broad daylight but they mimic the dappled shade of the tall grasses where a fawn waits for its mother. 

While a few birds are brightly colored like the red northern cardinal, many more are outfitted in varying shades of brown and tan. With the addition of spots, streaks and stripes, such as on the turkey or brown creeper, they often go undetected except for  movement or sound. Brightly colored birds will often molt into drab colors for the winter in order to be camouflaged. 

Can you find the three grouse in the boreal forest?

As unlikely as it seems, the bold tan, white and black bands on a killdeer make it virtually impossible to see while it sits on its eggs among stones of similar color. This type of camouflage is considered disruptive coloration because the contrasting colors or markings break up the outline of the animal which makes it harder to see. 

Other creatures rely on pure deception to keep them alive, especially insects. These insects, such as praying mantis, look just like the leaves and stems on the plant they rest upon. Some butterflies and moths look exactly like the tree bark on which they rest, lichens included. 

A grasshopper in late summer blends in with dried grass stems

Camouflage helps an animal look like the vegetation, soil or rocks where it lives, even if that means underwater. How often have you peered into crystal clear water and seen only rocks? Then the slightest flick of a tail reveals a fish camouflaged against the sunlit rocks. Besides coloring and markings, fish stay camouflaged by countershading--a technique where a creature’s back is dark and the underside is light. The dark, speckled backs of fish help them blend in with the plants and rocks of the bottom when viewed above by fish-hungry herons, hawks, eagles and osprey. Their silvery undersides keep their silhouettes against the surface from becoming too obvious to predatory fish lurking below. 

Being camouflage not only helps animals survive by not being eaten, but it also helps predatory animals hunt. Predators need to be as concealed as their prey in order to sneak up on their next meal. No matter how well camouflaged either the prey or predator is, the slightest movement can make the difference between surviving or not. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on October 18, 2012. 

Mighty Yukon River

From the time I leave Bettles, Alaska until I cross over the Cassiar Mountains east of Whitehorse, Yukon on the Alaska Highway, I will be traveling almost entirely in the Yukon River watershed. Only one area along the Alaska Highway near Haines Junction drains to the Pacific Ocean through the Saint Elias Mountains (the Dezadeash/Alsek River).

At approximately 330,000 square miles, the Yukon River watershed is the fifth largest in North America. Despite the huge area the Yukon River drains, the inhabitants are few, roughly 128,000 people, and that includes the major towns of Fairbanks and Whitehorse. Compare that to Spokane, Washington which has a population of 210,103 people or even Kootenai County (Idaho) with 141,132 people, both of which are located in the Columbia River Basin that encompasses 258,000 square miles. 

Crater Lake on the north side of Chilkoot Pass is part of the Yukon River watershed

From the northern reaches of the Coastal Range mountains in British Columbia to the southern slopes of the Brooks Range in Alaska to the Bering Sea, the Yukon River creates a large arc through the Yukon Territory and Alaska. The water in the Koyukuk River flowing past Bettles eventually ends up in the same place as that flowing from Lake Lindeman on the Chilkoot Trail--the Bering Sea. 

Before the Yukon River reaches the Bering Sea, it spreads out into an extensive delta, 40 to 60 miles wide in some areas (which is approximately the distance from Porthill to Sandpoint). This extensive area of wetlands is some of the most productive goose and shorebird nesting habitat in Alaska--over 100 million shorebirds and waterfowl migrate there to nest. The delta is also the starting location for one of the largest Chinook, Chum and Coho Pacific salmon runs in the world. 

Llewellyn Glacier and Atlin Lake--the headwaters of the Yukon River

From the Bering Sea to its glacial headwaters at the south end of Atlin Lake in British Columbia, the Yukon River traverses 1,980 miles, making it the third longest river in North America (the Mississippi River is first and the Mackenzie River in northern Canada is second) and the twentieth longest in the world. 

Over those nearly 2,000 miles, only 17 communities dot the main river banks, however, more exist on the tributaries. Fewer yet are the number of bridges--only four--along the entire length. The Yukon River bridge on the Dalton Highway (also called the Haul Road) is the only bridge that crosses the Yukon River in Alaska. 

The only bridge that crosses the Yukon River in Alaska

Before bridges and roads were built, sternwheelers navigated the Yukon River from the Bering Sea all the way to Whitehorse. This was the main method of travel in the watershed, especially during the gold rush days. Once the Klondike Highway was completed in the 1950‘s and connected Dawson City to Whitehorse (and the rest of North America’s road system), the need for sternwheelers plummeted. 

With minimal roads, only a small portion of the Yukon River watershed is accessible by road. The nearly thousand-mile drive from north of the Arctic Circle to east of Whitehorse crosses the Yukon River only twice but crosses dozens of small and large tributaries that all flow into the mighty Yukon. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on Oct. 11, 2012. 

What’s that protruding from your head?

Often I catch myself using the terms antler and horn interchangeably, such as “I’m going horn hunting”, even though I know they are different. One of the obvious differences is that antlers are shed annually while horns are not, which is why I go shed (antler) hunting and not horn hunting.  

Living in north Idaho, we are surrounded by mammals with antlers--moose, white-tailed deer, mule deer and elk. Wild mammals bearing horns are fewer (bighorn sheep and mountain goats) or farther away (buffalo and muskox), which makes horns all the more intriguing. 

Woodland buffalo

Every time I drive through the Thompson Falls area in Montana, I watch for Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep along the roadside. On mature rams, the massive, curled horns can weigh up to 30 pounds--which is small compared to the 80-pound pair of antlers a mature moose can grow in one year. On rams, the age can be determined by counting the number of growth rings. Those growth rings are composed of keratin, a fibrous protein, which comprises the outer covering of the horn. The inside of the horn is composed of a living bony core. 

Not only is keratin an integral part of horns but also a component in the claws and hooves of mammals; hair, nails and skin of people; scales and claws of reptiles; shells of turtles and tortoises; feathers, beaks and claws of birds; the quills of porcupines and the baleen of whales. A rhinoceros’s ‘horn’ is entirely composed of keratin and therefore isn’t considered a true horn because it lacks a bony core. 

Similarly, giraffe ‘horns’ are not true horns because even though they have a bony core the horns are covered with furred skin, not a keratinized sheath. Another mammal that is considered to have horns is the pronghorn antelope. 

The pronghorn antelope’s horns are a cross between horns and antlers. They have a bony core and a keratinized sheath but the sheath is shed annually like antlers. Also, a pronghorn’s horn is branched (hence the name pronghorn) and true horns are unbranched. Pronghorn antelope are the only animal in the world to have a forked ‘horn’ that is partially shed every year. 

Pronghorn antelope shed the horn's keratinized sheath every year

Even though true horns are unbranched, they can take on unique shapes--the full curl of the bighorn sheep or the spiraled horns of the spiral-horned antelope. The curves and spiral shapes are caused by growth pulses that result in some areas growing faster and thinner while other areas grow slower and thicker. 

Since horns grow continuously throughout an animal’s life, one might think there would be little nubbins of horns at birth. However, horns begin as small bony growths under the skin in the subcutaneous connective tissue and are not even attached to the skull. These small growths (called ossicones) will fuse to the skull bones sometime after birth and up to four years later in giraffes. 

Bighorn sheep horns will eventually grow into a full curl

Even though giraffes, rhinoceros and pronghorns don’t have true horns, it is easier to say they have horns than to figure out what to call the structures protruding from their head. One thing for sure is that they are not antlers. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on October 4, 2012. 

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.