The Wild Life
The snow started falling in December and keeps falling and falling and falling. We don’t have the tons that our friends in Girdwood have, but we’ve got around 3 feet, I’d guess. The moose have come down into lower elevations, and we’ve had a cow and calf wandering through the yard for a couple of days. They look up as I walk by (I always say hi).
We’ve also got an ermine who has taken up residence under the overturned drift boat, the overturned canoe, under the shed, under the van, etc. The hare population is up, and we’ve had a bunch of coyotes, though I haven’t seen or heard them lately.
I have to work on my coyote call. I can howl well enough that wolves will answer back, and I can hoot well enough for a great horned owl to answer back, but I cannot yap like a coyote. As soon as I open my mouth to join their conversation, they all shut up and disappear. Or maybe coyotes are just snobs.
Follow comments via the RSS Feed | Leave a comment | Trackback URL
Becca Wrote,
Ah, you need to realize that coyotes don’t yap, they sing. They are something of snobs, I think they know how smart they are. Anyway, they are tricksters and it’s probably better not to converse with them too much. You can really get an owl to respond? I’m impressed.
Link | January 26th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Jen Wrote,
All right I just tried to “sing” my coyote yap and it sounded something like a rooster. I don’t think they’re going to let me in the club anytime soon. My animal-call skills are limited.
Oh yes, we get owls to respond! We can track them down that way. I can do a passable boreal owl call, too, and have gotten a response to that as well. After a boreal owl kept us up one night, calling and calling and calling outside our window, I took great pleasure in calling during the day and making him wake up and answer. In the end, I was a much bigger nuisance than he was.
You can see him here:
http://funkandweber.com/mw/bobo064-2.html
This was the nest he claimed one spring, and he called and called for a female to join him, but when we left he was still all alone as best we could tell.
Link | January 26th, 2007 at 9:37 pm