mammals
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In the mud
“Mr. Holmes, they were the prints of a gigantic hound!” Or at least a raccoon.
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Teeth and Nails
The winter beach is often the last resting place of fish, fowl, and mammal. On my last walk along the north shore of Nantucket, I found a dead Harbor seal (Phoca vitulina). Such close-up encounters, albeit a bit queasy, can offer rare details. For instance, note the the animal’s human-scale teeth: Also, and this was…
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Another cache
Yesterday, we saw a bird’s nest that had been reused as a cache for seeds. Here’s another little hideaway, which was also probably stocked in the fall by one of the several species of mice that inhabit our noctural woodlands. Look inside.
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Raccoon
Road kill, Flatbush Avenue and Floyd Bennett Field. This raccoon’s jaw shows you the teeth that lets this omnivore eat practically anything, from your garbage to turtle eggs. In our region, cars are the animal’s only “predator.”
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Hanging
Outside the ruins of the Reef Bay sugar mill, the soldier crabs amassed. Inside, the bats hung out to dry. So far, white nose syndrome has not spread to the islands.
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Mongoose Dem
Off the Reef Bay Trail is a short sidetrack to a waterfall and pool with petrogylphs carved into the water-smoothed rock. The carvings are thought to be 1100 years old, the work of the Tainos who originally inhabited the Caribbean before the twin plagues of Caribs and Columbus. Another invader is the mongoose, introduced to…
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Deadly Toll
Domesticated cats that roam outside kill vast numbers of birds and mammals. Over a couple of days during Thanksgiving in Bradford, Massachusetts, one of the locals presented, in that feline way, an inadvertent survey of rarely-seen mammals. Above is the head of something rodenty; the viscera were left as well. The rest of these were…
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Brown Rat
A young Brown Rat, Rattus norvegicus, expired in Prospect Park. A cosmopolitan species, found on every continent except Antarctica, these rats thrive in dense conglomerations of humans because we provide so much for them to eat, and such nice places for them to burrow. Robert Sullivan’s Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the…
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Here be Whales
Thar she blows! Megaptera novaeangliae. We were off the Atlantic Highlands of New Jersey on board the Whale and Dolphin cruise of the American Princess out of Riis Landing at Fort Tilden on the Rockaways. And we saw a humpback whale spouting and rounding its bulk through the water. Whoa! A whale within sight of…
Backyard and Beyond 