Wildlife

[poliphilo]

Earlier this year it was common to see up to five small rabbits chowing down on the lawn. These days you're lucky to catch a glimpse of a single adult.  I suppose most of this years's generation will have been eaten by now.

If you're a rabbit you live in a world that's made of food. Being able to eat almost anything is a great strategy for survival. I imagine our own success as a species has a lot to do with our far-off ancestors going omnivore. A few weeks back the TV programme Countryfile featured a shiny little beetle that has backed itself into an evolutionary cul-de-sac by specializing in eating tansy leaves and nothing else. Silly beetle! It's survival now depends on mad humans planting meadows of tansy for its benefit.

Ailz was saying that squirrels have stopped retiring for the winter. Once they stayed in their drays and lived off stockpiled nuts, now they bounce around and eat the things we put out for the birds. This is evolution in our time. Is a squirrel that no longer squirrels things away still a squirrel or should we be looking to call it something else? And if we stopped feeding the birds would the squirrels die out or revert to their great-great-grandparents' behaviour? How many generations does it take for a species that has changed its modus vivendi to pass the point of no return?

Comments

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I read an article, years ago, that insisted that it's a myth that squirrels retire to their drays in winter. It claimed that they visit their stockpiles outside the drey all through winter - but we see them less, because they aren't scavenging

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

In which case we've altered their behaviour less than I thought.

Pity.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've been told that squirrels never fully hibernate. They snooze while it is really cold, but on milder winter days, pop out of their dreys to go in search of their caches of nuts and have a food top-up. So maybe they still do that?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Perhaps that's it.

And while they're doing it they get distracted by our bird tables...

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Squirrels never have fully hibernated which is why they cache food. It's something of a topos.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess they have to be awake at least some of the time in order to nibble the nuts they've collected

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the plight of vultures in India.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/world/asia/cultivating-vultures-to-restore-a-mumbai-ritual.html?_r=0

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the Parsees have the right idea.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Rabbits are much hardier than that. ^_^ They certainly do incur losses, but they'll be around throughout the year. Not necessarily as conspicuously as during the summer hour's long days, but they're no fools.

Actually, something you might want to do is set up a camera trap! With all the local activity, it could be quite interesting keeping tabs on just who's visiting. It's not something I have experience in, unfortunately, as the current back yard is a dead end, and of little interest to wildlife; but, if you were to try somesuch, you could do very much worse than enquire of the assembled minds of Talk Photography.

Most traps are simply IR-activated still cameras, but it's perfectly feasible to rig up IR illumination for video as well. Another benefit of camera traps, of course, is that as they're catching their targets up close, there's no need for precision optics, so the kit can be quite affordable. (Versus, say, a D7100 at £900 and a Nikkor 300mm f/4D at a bit less if used.. and that's barely the start of it =:)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the suggestion.

Wildlife photography isn't really my thing. I like watching our visitors, but I've never done it with a camera to hand.