If you like birds or woodlots, you’ll want this book.
February 26, 2012
Every now and then a book comes along which every landowner will want as a reference. The title explains the book’s purpose: A land manager’s guide to conserving habitat for forest birds in southern Ontario, by Dawn Burke, Ken Elliott, Karla Falk, and Teresa Piraino, 2011. What the title fails to convey, however, is just how exquisitely put together this Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources publication is.
On one level it’s a well-illustrated coffee table book. A flip through the volume reveals many pieces of the work of wildlife artist Peter Burke and the contributions of many photographers. The bird portraits are varied and illustrative. For example, a shot by Robert McCaw of a pair of nesting pileated woodpeckers makes the gender distinction between the otherwise-identical birds easy: the male’s red crest continues down to his beak. The female, on the other hand, has a black “moustache.” An image which sticks in my mind is a Ken Elliott shot of the forest-floor nest of an ovenbird. It’s just a dark spot in the leaf cover, but the zoom shows the nest. So much for carefree walks through forest leaves in spring: I could step on one of these and not even realize it.
A later section of the book is set up as a guide to forest-dwelling birds, beginning with my personal favourite, the ruffed grouse. Perhaps the most interesting page is the profile of the yellow-bellied sapsucker. I have long suspected this critter of killing off the odd white birch in my garden by drilling its neat rows of holes for sap and insects, but I hadn’t realized that hummingbirds depend heavily upon sapsuckers for their survival. Apparently the little guys follow sapsuckers around and can’t survive without them. I’d always wondered what happened to the hummingbirds if cottagers forgot to fill those red feeders.
If there’s a villain in the book it’s the cowbird, the biggest natural threat to the survival of songbirds in Ontario. Cowbirds don’t raise their own young. Instead, the female lays up to forty eggs per year in other birds’ nests. Robins and blue jays simply eject the strange eggs and continue nesting. Other birds don’t have that evolutionary advantage, and often raise the fast-maturing cowbird chicks to the detriment of their own smaller and later-maturing offspring. Cowbirds love lawns and closely-grazed pasture. The further the forest-dweller’s nest is from the habitat of the cowbird, the more likely the pair is to raise their young successfully. According to Elliott, that’s a main reason why houses in the woods (with their lawns) are tough on forest birds.
But the main purpose of the book is to provide a primer on forest succession and management of tree harvesting activities to protect or improve bird habitat. In a presentation at the Annual Kemptville Woodlot Conference last week, author Ken Elliott put up slides to illustrate tree growth over the thirty-year period after different harvesting methods. He explained to us that these colour illustrations had to look as good as the rest of the book, so he asked artist Peter Burke to do paintings of each type of tree, then Lyn Thompson and Ken used Photoshop to group the paintings into the denser figures for the blocks on the chart. It wouldn’t hurt to have a magnifying glass at hand when perusing this volume. A great deal of material went into it, so even the small photos hold interest.
For me the most startling illustration in the book is a map of southern Ontario which graphs tree cover. The counties north of Lake Erie show very little green on the map. This is the area which was almost a desert in 1905 when Edmund Zavitz began his lifelong mission to bring it back to health with tree plantings. Even with the 50 Million Trees Program currently under way in Ontario, Essex County still has only 5% tree cover.
Our area of eastern Ontario, on the other hand, boasts 48% tree cover, so our growth area lies in connecting forest patches and managing existing forests to increase the distance of the woodlot core from its edges and marauding cowbirds.
The core of the book’s content deals with harvesting methods in woodlots. Clear cut, shelterwood, group selection, diameter-limit, stand improvement and single-tree selection harvest plans are examined with explanations and graphs indicating the impact of each harvest method on 85 species of forest-dwelling birds. For the forester the critique of each method may prove informative. It appears as though, apart from clear cutting, diameter-limit harvesting is the most damaging to the health of woodlots, yet municipalities regularly legislate diameter limits because they are easy to understand and enforce.
I asked Ken, “Why should woodlot owners be concerned about the bird population of their property?”
“I think the best explanation comes on page 81 of the book. Birds have evolved as a fundamental part of these ecosystems. Although you often don’t see them or what they are doing, they can usually be heard and it should be reassuring to know that the work they do as pollinators, insect predators, seed dispersers, and fungi vectors may be critical to the overall health of forests. On top of this their beauty and elusiveness provide entertainment for many nature enthusiasts and hunters. So although we can’t say what the forest would be like without birds, we do know that having them in the forest provides an important piece of the puzzle and seeing and hearing them is a great reward for those who get time to go exploring in the woods.”
A land manager’s guide… is available in full colour online as a PDF file at http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/Forests/Publication/STDPROD_089385.html.
Have a look. Then you can order a hard copy (ISBN 978-1-4435-0097-5) for $15.00 from the Landowner Resource Centre in Manotick.
Cagney and the wolf’s cache
February 20, 2012
The snow has melted off the twenty acres to the north of the house on Young’s Hill. This afternoon our English springer spaniel Cagney discovered something buried in the grass around some young pines. She chewed, pulled up something meaty, and kept eating. Strange, that’s a large mouse if it has that many mouthfuls. She took another bite and retreated, so I prodded the newly-uncovered clump of grass and knocked out about a Mason jar-full of coarsely chopped beef. Must be a cache left by one of the bush wolves or coyotes who live on the property, buried in the snow and grass and now exposed. The meat looked fresh.
When looking from above I initially couldn’t see anything except the hole Cagney had made with her nose and paws, but there was quite a volume of food down there.
The neighbours must have drawn a dead cow out to the quarry. Erin and her mom have had a good winter if they’ve left this much food uneaten.
What women want
January 8, 2012
Our English springer spaniel Moody Blue died three years ago after a long decline. Bet insisted each time I asked that she just wasn’t ready for another dog.
And then last week Roz sent Bet a card in which she mentioned the fun Charlie had had over New Year’s weekend in Lakefield playing with their host’s spaniel, Loki. Apparently the enjoyment was mutual. Bet read this comment aloud to me: “Did you put her up to this?”
You’ll never know what Bet wants by asking her. Sensing the moment, I dropped an email to Blue’s breeder, Karmadi English Springer Spaniels in Maberly. Owner Diane Herns wrote back that she had one remaining female puppy because of an unexpected allergy in her intended family. Barby would be ready to go this weekend.
Looking for another Moody Blue, I asked if she had an older dog.
She told me that Time, a fine yearling, is part her breeding stock, but could go out to a home between whelping sessions. She suggested we come to have a look.
Bet’s response to this reflected her passionate ambivalence: “I can’t come right now because I have to feed these people,” referring to the crew of Martin, Roz and Charlie painting the interior of the new garage. In a call to Diane we settled upon Sunday morning for a visit.
“You know that if I look into the face of a spaniel puppy, I’ll be hooked. I have no resistance whatever. I just melt.”
Then I came down with the flu. This was the first such session since my retirement six years ago, and it came as quite a shock to the system. Kept awake by the disruption through the rest of the night, Bet scrolled on her iPad through dozens of photos of Diane’s dogs, increasingly wondering if she was up to the six months of interrupted sleeps it would take to house-train a puppy.
By Sunday morning I had recovered enough to make the drive up to Hwy 7. When we arrived Barby was part of a joyful tangle of 10-week-old spaniels in a playpen. She was warm, cuddly, and clean. Her antics with a plastic bone kept us in stitches while Diane finished grooming Time. Then we met the yearling. Time is a fine specimen of an English springer, particularly happy when in the company of a big bunch of puppies. But it became immediately obvious to us that she had bonded strongly with Diane. Time, to my mind, was a one-woman dog.
At length Diane mentioned that she also had Cagney, a retired show dog (like Blue), whose main drawback was her age, 8 ½ years. She further mentioned that Cagney doesn’t like other dogs, and could use a home for her declining years well away from other animals. While Bet cuddled with the puppy I asked to meet the old dog.
Cagney turned out to be a beautiful, dignified specimen in the peak of condition who looked as though she would love to have a new home away from the kennel. Same as Blue. We took her for a walk.
She definitely knows which buttons to push on a human, does our Cagney. In the agility test she hopped neatly into the Lexus and perched on the back seat, awaiting instructions. While well trained, she showed herself quite human in her delight with the smells and unexpected freedom of a winter walk outside. She’s no robot.
What chance did a puppy have against a classy, experienced lady like this?
Once home, following the house tour and the food dish location, she proved quite amusing. Cagney’s a talker when she feels like it. Her woofs of delight and happy exploration of her new house added great cheer to the household.
Though bred and trained for the bench for her whole life, on the first walk in a field Cagney had a whale of a time bounding around her new territory. She flounced around, exuberance in every leap. Breeding kicked in each time she reached the end of shotgun range, and she would quarter to left or right and loop back to us.
Of course no clump of hay or brush could go unexamined.
But she reminded us most of Blue whenever a camera came out. True to her show dog heritage she played naturally to the photographer, and concluded her first photo shoot with little yelps of pleasure. What a ham. When posed between us on the Ranger she suddenly decided it was time for affection, and planted a big kiss on my face as Charlie moved in for a closeup.
Bet read this draft over, handed me back the computer and said, “While sitting there this afternoon reading with Cagney at my feet, I thought: ‘The house feels more like a home now.’”
I guess both ladies got what they wanted.
THE MORNING AFTER (UPDATE):
Morning is much livelier here now. As I stumbled down in the dark for coffee, a white shadow awaited me on the mat at the foot of the stairs. She bounded around, emitting little yelps and barks, but quietly. No time for a leash. She looked out the lane at what must have been a coyote, then headed out into the field to do her business. Happy loops, enjoying her freedom, but not for long, because hunger beckoned.
Back from her run her thoughts were only on breakfast, which she encouraged with a series of relatively quiet howls. Hoovered the kibble. Affection time. Upstairs to greet Bet, still faking sleep. Back down to me. Then she fell asleep beside me on the floor when I opened my computer.
A dog owner’s life.
A book about the fish we eat
January 1, 2012
For Christmas Roz gave me Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, by Paul Greenberg, Penguin, 2010.
Greenberg’s childhood fish stories quickly hooked me. From there I willingly followed him through first-person accounts of the development of salmon farming, sea bass culture, the decline of the cod fishery and its substitutes, and the doomed open water fishery centered around the bluefin tuna.
Salmon became subjects for aquaculture because of their large eggs and easy fertilization. None of the forty subspecies of Atlantic salmon were particularly appropriate for domestication because they ate too much, swam too fast, and grew too slowly. It came down to Trygve Gjedrem, a Norwegian sheep breeder, to cross salmon adapted to long migrations up rivers (high fat content) with those from the far north for their rapid growth as juveniles.
The problem Gjedrem faced was to selectively breed a salmon which could be grown on less than the 6 pounds of fish it takes to finish a pound of wild salmon. Within twenty generations the Norwegians had that ratio down to three-to-one.
No wild salmon live south of the equator, but the fjords of Chile have proven productive for aquaculture. Chile has quickly become the world’s second largest salmon producer.
Domesticated salmon now contribute over three billion pounds per year to our tables, three times wild salmon production.
Greenberg prefers a white-fleshed fillet like that of the largemouth bass or its marine equivalent, the striped bass. These lazy fish have much less of the strongly flavoured red muscle tissue associated with adrenaline-fueled rushes after prey, and so their flesh tends to be light and flaky.
By the 1970s striped bass and European sea bass had been overfished to the point that the only way to meet the demand for the delicacy was through aquaculture.
The author explains how the European sea bass has had an interesting part in late 20th century politics. Their victory over Egypt in the Seven Days War in 1967 gave Israel access to the Sinai Peninsula, and with it Lake Bardawil, a shallow lagoon which was an ideal spawning area for European sea bass.
Millions went into research on the domestication of the sea bass, a fish Greenberg insists was a poor choice for the role. With the European Economic Union, many Euros went to Greece to take advantage of the country’s calm, crenellated shorelines, ideal sites for aquaculture. The sea bass must be a desirable fish: Israel wouldn’t give back the land they took from Egypt to farm it, and Greece ran headlong into debt to try to meet the market demand.
Greenberg suggests that there’s an Australian sea bass, the barramundi, which is admirably suited to aquaculture. It can reach adulthood in fresh water ponds, and on a partially vegetarian diet in the bargain.
But while salmon and sea bass attracted buyers for special holiday meals, the day-to-day food fish for much of the world has always been cod, the ugly bottom feeder with the white, flaky flesh. Cod’s very abundance has been a big part of its appeal. But then cod stocks plummeted in the face of industrial fishing, and American and Canadian governments listened to scientists and closed the fishery.
Cod is a terrible fish to domesticate. Apparently it gnaws its way out of nets with annoying regularity, hates to spawn, and is a huge feeder.
The book is at its best when Greenberg describes the lesser fish which are gradually gaining acceptance to fill the fish-sticks role. Alaskan pollack is a good fish, though the huge fleet owners have manipulated politicians and quotas and strained the resource.
Supermarkets demand a constant, predictable, enormous quantity of fillets. Fast food outlets are even more persistent. For example MacDonald’s makes its fish sandwiches from hoki, a cod-like fish found in abundance off the coast of New Zealand, though they are now under pressure to reduce their reliance on the tasty fish as stocks drop.
With a change of diet a Vietnamese catfish, the Pangasius (known locally as the tra), has been upgraded to American chef’s delight. Greenberg stresses that this air-breathing filter feeder is a good candidate for aquaculture, especially when scientists have improved its taste by eliminating the algae which causes fresh-water fish to take on a muddy taste.
The ubiquitous African tilapia has made great strides as a cod substitute. This filter feeder requires no additional feed in many aquacultures and reproduces with abandon. (Not to worry, Canadians: it dies if the water temperature gets much below 50 degrees F.)
In the 1960s the world decided that whales are wildlife, not food. Of course the green revolution with its oil-producing seeds for margarine rendered whaling uneconomic, but for the most part mankind turned away from the killing of whales when they could no longer ignore their sentience.
But the bluefin tuna is a warm-blooded animal, as well. This sushi favourite commands enormous prices and the 700-pound monsters have been hunted to depletion. Even more insidious, Greenberg suggests, is the netting of juveniles in the Mediterranean to raise to maturity in pens for the market.
Off the coast of Hawaii, on the other hand, Greenberg tells of a dive on deep-water pens where, “Without any selective breeding whatsoever, the amount of fish required to produce a pound of kahala ranges from 1.6:1 to 2:1, ten times better than the feed conversion ratio for bluefin tuna (233).” And they spawn constantly. Renamed Kona Kampachi for the sushi market, the kahala is gaining acceptance with chefs and consumers. Greenberg suggests it’s time to end the bluefin fishery.
For its insight and information Four Fish belongs on the bookshelf of every serious cook or fisherman. It’s also a fine read.
Score one for the Ranger
August 29, 2011
I heard the calls from up on the hill. A dog was on the loose. Calls continued. Good lungs on that woman. Then I saw Joe hiking across the north end of the property, headed for Crosby. I hopped into the Ranger and ran across the field to him. My neighbour happily accepted the offer of the UTV because last time he had used it he scoured the countryside for a half hour and eventually found the bearded collie behind Baker’s Tires in Forfar.
Away he went down the paved road, covering fields on the way, until he disappeared into Forfar. His wife walked down across the field to our driveway, covered in burrs. We picked them off and dropped them in the burn barrel on the way by. Elaine looks as though her new lifestyle is sitting well with her. Both the she and Joe retired last year from Rideau Distict High School in Elgin.
“We were just back from a reading, sitting in the sunroom which is cut off from the rest of the house. Just as we thought about making dinner, I realized it was a bit quiet in the house. The wind had blown the door open. Two dogs were missing, and we had no idea for how long.”
Elaine and I chatted for a while as we strolled out the driveway to the road, then she perked up and took off in mid-sentence on a sprint up the road: she had heard one of her dogs. The lady was making pretty good time up that long, steep hill. Then I saw her throw up her arms in celebration. One dog found. She was still doing her victory dance when I saw the roll bar of the Ranger appear over the crest of the hill from the Hwy. 15 side. Joe had the other dog.
A couple of minutes later they brought the Ranger back. Joe explained, “She was walking down the centre line of Highway 15, so I went after her with the Ranger, stopped traffic, and got her. The new pup was waiting in the driveway when I got home.”
Joe’s rapid 4-mile circuit down concession roads and along the highway quite possibly saved the life of one of their prized bearded collies. Score one for the Ranger.
While the wolves are away, the deer will play.
July 5, 2011
This year I haven’t kept up my end of the bargain with the wolves over fish heads, so last night when I finally took some out to the row of blight-resistant butternut seedlings next to the walnut orchard, two deer were standing there, placidly chewing on my prized butternuts. They moved over into the walnuts while I distributed the gory wolf-bait, but one came to the apple trees below the house this morning to entertain us over breakfast. Yearlings or young does, I think. Much larger and sleeker than the runts on the lawn at the Queen Charlotte Lodge. Night before last one explored both gardens, nipping leaves off a corn plant, but that’s about it.
They’re pretty things.
Sunday afternoon in the woodlot
February 21, 2011
Martin’s parents were visiting from Halifax and so he and Anne-Claire brought them to the farm. Bet and I were quite curious to see what combination of personalities would produce a character like Martin, so we looked forward to the visit.
André and Simonne Mallet came across as very nice people. We drifted into the garage, a year-long project where Martin had gained the early part of his building experience.
Turns out André has quite an interest in woodworking, so we talked tools until the house visit came up. Then came the woodlot tour. André pulled a hard-sided suitcase out of the trunk and opened it to reveal two sets of snowshoes. Immediately I saw where Martin gets the equipment fetish. His parents had packed two suitcases for the flight to Ontario, and one of them was for snowshoes. Turns out they hadn’t had a chance to use the new webs in two years of trying. Even an owl-spotting expedition on Wolfe Island the day before had been conducted on bare ground.
I assured them that a lack of snow would not be a problem in the woodlot today.
The clear, calm day proved perfect for tree hugging. The crust retained tracks from previous days, as well as the fresh marks in powder of recent passers-by. We had fun speculating as to whether one set of tracks was from a massive squirrel, a short-toed raccoon, or some mystery animal beyond our experience.
The turkeys seem to have taken over the woodlot for the winter. On one southern slope in the soft snow they literally tore the hill apart, digging into the leaf litter for whatever it is turkeys eat. Martin commented that it looked as if a herd of feral hogs had been loose in this area. The snow was soft and they were hungry, I guess. Turkeys are strong birds.
Turns out the wind that tore the shingles off the new garage last week also ripped into one of the trees in the woods. Scarred from the ice storm, this 24” black walnut seems to have had one dead root, for that section pulled out of the ground, spitting the trunk into two sections over about nine feet, leaving quite a mess. There’s still potential lumber in the wreckage, so it’s time to get the winch and saw out before the ground gets too muddy for skidding.
Martin and Charlie showed everyone the trees they tapped last winter, and while they were looking around Simonne pointed to an old nesting box left over from the plowing match: “Is that an owl in that box?”
Surely enough, there was a small owl standing in the duck-sized entrance to the box screwed twelve feet up the trunk of a maple tree. Martin sneaked in with a camera, then blew up the shot to show us. “It’s a screech owl, and it seems to be asleep. I want to get the binoculars and take a better picture through them.”
So off they dashed to the parking lot, father and son, sprinting across the butternut field on snowshoes. Fleet-footed Roz couldn’t resist the chase and took off after them, showing every sign of overtaking when Martin tripped head-over-heels and skidded to a halt. Up they were and off again. The rest of us walked back toward the house until Simonne spotted a pileated woodpecker placidly feeding at the top of a clump of basswoods.
They’re cheerful birds, and not very shy, so we stood and watched while Anne-Claire provided fun facts like, “Did you know a pileated woodpecker’s tongue is very long, and circles around its brain?”
I showed Simonne one of the resident red mulberry trees. She countered with a tale about the yellow raspberry bushes they have in New Brunswick, called gooseberries. The crew returned with the binoculars, Martin collected my camera again, and away they went for a photo-shoot with the dozing owl. Simonne joined the bird watch. Turns out the expedition on Wolfe Island had produced only two owl sightings, and the screech owl was the essential third tick to qualify the weekend as a success, in birding terms.
Somewhat later they returned to the shop and Martin handed me back my camera. On display was a remarkably large image of the small owl. Apparently, if you are determined, you can take a usable digital photograph through one lens of a pair of binoculars.
Over chili André and I compared fish from the Maritimes and Eastern Ontario, and talked about professional bass tournaments. The largemouth bass is an invasive species in much of the world, introduced by avid fishermen. In New Brunswick it threatens the brook trout, and so it isn’t looked upon with the favour it finds in Leeds County.
I asked if I could catch cod off a dock in Nova Scotia. Martin responded that very few docks adjoin 100’ of water, and the shallowest a cod will get is about 65’. Mackerel are available, though, and very fast on a light line, and his dad added that the rainbow trout fishing is excellent. It sounds as though we need to explore the Maritimes in the near future.
Canine encounters
October 3, 2010
September 10, 2010:
The young coyote visited the orchard at suppertime today, sampling the fruit of every tree, but returning to pick up fallen pears several times. I moved out on the elevated deck to try for a photo and to my surprise she co-operated, then began a game of peek-a-boo with me. She stepped behind a trunk. I moved for a better angle. She looked me in the eye and stepped behind another tree, but she kept picking up windfalls throughout the game. Coyotes really like apples, but the one I’ve named Erin seems fond of pears as well. She must have a sweet tooth.
I’ve watched Erin and her two siblings play tag and hide-and-seek quite often during the summer as they grew up in the field just below the orchard. They love to dodge around the bales of hay and climb on them.
The best episode of the summer had to be the day four turkeys decided to forage in their field. I looked out to see two adult turkeys flying and two half-grown chicks running behind, chased by a young coyote. The birds could easily outdistance their foe, but there were large windrows in the field and traffic became a bit confused. At one point the coyote got ahead of one of the young turkeys, but by the time the bizarre chase passed out of sight of my window, the bird was doing its best to catch up.
Only later did Dr. Bill Barrett explain to me that this family of coyotes have decided defend their field. “Near Forfar I had sea gulls all over the place when I was raking and baling, but the in next field the coyotes came out and wouldn’t let one land. The mice in the windrows were theirs, and they weren’t going to share them. When I moved up to the field above the barn they didn’t follow, but that big gray hawk kept me company all day.”
Construction on the garage is an ordeal for the coyotes. The nail guns must be too loud for their sensitive ears because they disappear until they are sure no more loud bangs will come from the human’s den.
October 2:
Coyotes certainly can adapt. After I devoutly claimed that the nail guns had scared the coyotes away, on Friday Erin resumed her afternoon visits to the orchard while I banged away on the roof of the garage. Bet watched her languidly select each apple, return to her temporary nest, lie down and chew it up with great enjoyment.
But today took the cake for coyote sightings. As I drove out the lane on the Ranger this morning I spotted two little heads peeking out of a bush in Laxton’s fence row, 400 feet to the north. The two heads were very close together, as though the pups had lain down shoulder-to-shoulder to enjoy the show. I shut off the UV to watch. One pair of ears tracked every sound. The other was so still I became convinced it was a bunch of leaves. Eventually the still creature stood up and walked away, leaving Mobile-ears to keep watch on the noisy human.
In the afternoon I was mowing the orchard when my peripheral vision picked up Erin, seated just out of the way, clearly impatient for me to leave so that she could have her afternoon meal. I explained to her that I needed to cut the grass and she retreated a bit, but returned.
“You want an apple? Here!” And I fired an empire I had picked off a passing tree at her. She fielded it like a shortstop and wolfed it down. Next apple, same thing. Erin seemed to like this game. Over the space of five laps of the orchard she snagged the five apples I threw her way, and also four mice she found in the grass. Then she disappeared.
This evening behind the garage I was explaining to Martin the habits of the coyote family when the large male raised his head from the foliage to the west of Laxton’s bush, yawned, and resumed his nap. He seems curious to identify new voices, but very calm in his demeanour. He looks and acts very much like a middle-aged German shepherd.
October 3:
This morning produced a canine encounter which proved much more frenetic than the coyote visits. Towards the end of her walk, Bet came around the end of the barn and spotted “two beige bullets blasting down the lane from the woods. One jumped up on me and then collapsed on the ground, wiggling in excitement.”
She rolled me out of bed to deal with the crisis. I nabbed the male, Georgy, and Bet located his sister, Gillie, who was raiding the cat’s food dish. Keen on a Ranger-ride, the west highland terriers nodded eagerly at the scenery as we drove up the hill to their home.
With a population of at least four coyotes in the neighbourhood, these little bait dogs (and four turkeys) seem to be able to share the territory without ill effects. The resident coyotes don’t behave at all like the pack of four furtive strangers I saw in the quarry last fall. They were scary, but didn’t stick around.
October 12:
My mother spent the afternoon in and around the orchard, so Erin’s schedule was off today. At suppertime I noticed a larger and furrier coyote in her usual haunts, but with Erin’s characteristic markings around the muzzle. Apparently she’s experimenting with her new body after the growth spurt, because windfall apples no longer appeal to her. Now she stands up on her hind legs to pick fresh apples off the trees, often settling down on her haunches to leap straight up to snap fruit from higher branches. She seems curious to see how high she can jump, an adolescent testing her limits.
the Walnut Diary 