Tag: nature

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Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the mule deer

By Sean R. Stubben/Shutterstock

Late fall is a big time for mule deer: the rut has begun! Males matched in size duke it out for the right to mate with a chosen female. They’ll lock antlers and fight for hours. Eventually, the weaker mule deer gives up.

Although the mule deer looks similar to the white-tailed deer, the larger species sticks to Western Canada and the Yukon. They’re suited to arid prairie environments and the Rocky Mountains, where they feed mostly on herbaceous plants and woody shrubs as opposed to grass. Even though they have a four-chambered stomach like cows and elk, they’re not as good at digesting certain plants. They have to be choosy about what they eat in order to get enough nutrients

Mule deer sometimes travel by “stotting”: bounding into the air in four-footed leaps. (Gazelle move this way too.) Experts don’t know exactly why they do this. After all, it takes a lot of energy and it’s more likely to attract the attention of predators. That said, one possible reason could be that the deer hopes to show the potential predator that it’s physically fit and healthy. And therefore, will be able to escape. (“Don’t bother coming after me, wolf. You won’t be able to catch me anyway.”)

Mule deer are an iconic species of Western North America; there are nearly a dozen subspecies. They all vary slightly depending on where they live. Black-tailed deer, for example, are a subspecies of mule deer found in the coastal regions of northwestern North America.

In some areas, a mule deer’s range overlaps with white-tailed deer habitat, and the two species do sometimes hybridize. But, ID tip time! The mule deer has big, mule-like ears (about three quarters of the length of its head). Bucks, meanwhile, also have more of a forked antler structure; white-tailed deer have points that grow from a central branch.

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Cottage Life

Cottage Q&A: Why do mammals have whiskers?

By COULANGES/Shutterstock

Why do mammals have whiskers?—Faced with Facts

Mammals use their whiskers—also called vibrissae or tactile hairs—to gather information about their environments. “They play a primary role as sensory tools,” says Kamal Khidas, the curator of vertebrate zoology collections at the Canadian Museum of Nature. Whiskers are longer and thicker than regular hair and are used largely for food finding and navigation, but they also appear to have a role—at least for some species—in communication, pheromone dispersion, and attack behaviour.

Nearly all mammals have whiskers at some stage of their lives. For the most part, they’re located on the face: around the nostrils, above the ears and eyes, and on the chin. Their number, size, location, and arrangement pattern varies.

“It depends on what an animal’s sensory world is like,” says Fiona Reid, the author of the Peterson Field Guide to Mammals of North America. Arboreal mammals tend to have long, dense whiskers; marine mammals have stiffer whiskers, for detecting water currents. Bats have sensory hairs on their hindquarters and feet because they often back into small crevices, says Reid. Rats, who also spend a lot of time in tight, dark spaces, are almost constantly sweeping their facial whiskers back and forth against objects to determine size, shape, and orientation. It’s called “whisking.”

Unless you count hipsters and Abraham Lincoln, humans don’t have whiskers. We likely lost them during evolution.

This article was originally published in the Fall 2016 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

Got a question for Cottage Q&A? Send it to answers@cottagelife.com.

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Cottage Life

Humpback whale babies are booming this year!

By Imagine Earth Photography/Shutterstock

The humpback whale has made a comeback once again! This fall, the Pacific Whale Watch Association announced an unprecedented humpback whale baby boom in the Salish Sea. The start of the season is known to mark the final peak of humpback whale sightings as they look for their last feeding opportunities before heading south for the winter—and the end of October brought with it a pleasant surprise for west coast whale watchers.

This year, 21 humpback whale calves were recorded throughout inland Washington and British Columbia from April to October. This sets a record for the highest annual number of humpback whales in the area ever, according to Mark Malleson, a field biologist with the Center for Whale Research. The number has close to doubled in the Salish region this year as compared to the 11 documented humpback whale calves in 2020’s peak season. Researchers can only hypothesize about the cause of the recent boom.

Wild Profile: Meet the humpback whale

“We’re not sure why there were so many calves this year,” says Erin Gless, the executive director of the Pacific Whale Watch Association in a recent news release. “It’s possible the last two years had an abundance of food for the whales, or it could be as simple as the fact that as the number of adult whales in the population grows, so too does the number of calves we can expect to see each year.”

The association notes that the species did see a drastic depletion in the early 1900s from commercial whaling. By the 1920s, the North American west coast had few humpback whale sightings. And according to the latest Periodic Status Review from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), the number of global humpback whales had decreased by more than 90 per cent. It was only until the termination of whaling that the global number of humpbacks was able to slowly climb to more than 80,000. Currently, the Pacific Whale Watch Association confirms that there are more than 500 humpback whales recorded in the Salish Sea.

Watch this stunning aerial view of a whale and her calf

This year’s abundance of humpback calves is great news, given the many human activities that still affect the species’ livelihood. The WDFW recognizes entanglement, vessel collisions, increased disturbance of marine noise and communication, climate change, oil spills, and harmful algal blooms as the leading threats to humpback populations going forward. Despite these environmental conditions, the humpback whale calves spotted this season have nodded to a hopeful and fruitful future for marine life in the North American Pacific.

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Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the humpback whale

By GUDKOV ANDREY/Shutterstock

So, you’ve never seen a humpback whale. Picture a city bus with fins, leaping acrobatically from the water. Unbelievable, right? If you happen to be near B.C.’s Salish Sea in the fall, you’re in luck: it’s prime humpback-whale time—and you can see this magic for yourself.

The humpback whale is big everywhere—even its heart weighs about three times as much as an average human being. Its powerful tail can measure as long as 18 feet. And its 15-foot-long pectoral flippers are the largest of all whales’ (compared to body size): one third of the entire humpback’s body length.

A six-hour rescue mission freed this humpback tangled in an anchor line

The Salish Sea is so humpback-heavy in the fall because this is the huge mammal’s last chance to stuff its face before moving elsewhere to overwinter. An adult whale will scarf up to 3,000 lbs per day, usually zooplankton, krill, or gobs of schooling fish. Humpbacks are baleen whales—they have no teeth (unlike, for example, orcas). So they don’t chew anything. Instead, they raise their upper jaws, and expand a series of folding plates—picture someone playing an accordion—to gulp down gallons and gallons of water and fish in one go. The whale can then use its tongue to squeeze the water through a series of bristly, hanging “plates” on either side of the jaw (a.k.a. baleens). It’s like pouring a can of stewed tomatoes through a sieve to drain the excess liquid.

What happens when humpback whales get into a rumble with orcas?

Working in groups, humpback whales also do something called “bubble feeding.” Whales will blow bubbles around fish to deliberately encircle them, as if in a net. Then, another whale, or several, will swim from beneath, swallowing the prey—helpfully concentrated into a mass—as they rise to the surface. Cooperation makes fish happen!

Humpbacks are also known for their stellar singing. The humpback whale’s song is more complex than the vocalizations of any other marine mammal. Their calls are audible—to other whales, at least—from hundreds of kilometres away. Whales don’t have vocal chords; they make noises by squeezing air through their sinuses. What they produce sounds like a series of whines, grunts, squeals, and cattle-like lowing. But it’s cool enough that in 1977, a Voyager spacecraft included a humpback whale recording as part of its “greetings from earth” messages. Has your voice ever been sent into space?

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Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the sharp-shinned hawk

By David Byron Keener/Shutterstock

No bigger than a blue jay, the sharp-shinned hawk is small but lethal. Thanks to its short wings and rudder-like tail, this bird can swoop down suddenly to nab songbird victims such as finches and warblers. The sharp-shinned hawk is agile, able to swerve and dart through branches once it spots its prey from above the tree tops.

Just like wolves and other predators, sharp-shins usually target sick or injured birds. That’s a good thing—it helps ensure that only fit, healthy individuals survive and reproduce. They’re killing machines: male sharp-shinned hawks that are in charge of feeding their young in the spring catch and slaughter six to 10 songbirds per day! Although songbirds make up 90 per cent of a sharp-shin’s diet, they’ll go after anything that they feel they can reliably catch: quail, shorebirds, doves, swifts—even falcons. Not to mention rodents, and, occasionally, insects such as moths or grasshoppers (a nice, light snack).

Female sharp-shinned hawks are larger than males, and almost twice as heavy. This makes them less nimble, but also able to target bigger prey such as woodpeckers. You’ll know if a sharp-shin is hanging around your backyard bird feeder because its presence tends to whip prey birds into a frenzy; they’ll start emitting loud, terrified alarm calls. (Danger! A hawk is here!)

How to feed birds without putting them at risk

The sharp-shinned hawk is a “pursuit hunter,” fond of surprising prey by bursting out of a hidden perch, or, when targeting a rodent, pouncing from a few feet above. They use cover to their advantage, and will hide in shrubs in order to sneak close to prey and then ambush them. So sneaky!

A sharp-shinned hawk’s migration patterns follow those of its food source:  small birds. They hit cottage country in the spring soon after sparrows and other small species arrive in April, and stick around until mid-October. Some cottage-country sharp-shins don’t go further south than southern Ontario, but others travel all the way to Panama for the winter.

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Potins

Jean-Claude Van Damme: ‘I can save the world’

Jean-Claude Van Damme claims he can save the world.

The 54-year-old actor claims the human race faces extinction in the next 50 or 60 years but says he can stop it by lobbying the world’s leaders, who he knows personally, to save the animals.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 live Breakfast, he said: ”The human being is a wonderful species and they have a way of fixing everything and hopefully they are going to help themselves, but if they don’t then it [the world] is over in 50 or 60 years.

”I’ve got a way, not to change everybody, but to make a huge difference. It’s mathematically correct. By creating this ecology circle, where the leaders of the world are saving animals. If we see our world leaders are doing that, by trying to save the animals, by trying to put things on a good balance and automatically people are going to try to rearrange for a better position on earth. Earth will have a longer process of life, with people in it.”

When interviewer Colin Paterson admitted he was unsure of how Jean-Claude would get the world leaders together, the action star said ”nature”.

He added: ”Every leader they have a heart, and they have a wife, they have children, they understand the word love or deception. Everybody on earth has something called a good side on them.

”With all the people I know from a valet parking friend of mine to Mr Putin, or Mr Obama and all those big names, I know them well … Mr Trump too, I think we can do something because this is the last chance. 2015 we can fix the world!”

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Potins

Gisele Bundchen’s tree house dream

Gisele Bundchen dreams of living in a tree house.

The 34-year-old supermodel admits that the memories of running around on her grandmother’s farm in Brazil as a child have left her with dreams of living a similarly peaceful life with her husband, American football star Tom Brady, and children Benjamin and Vivian.

She shared: ”My earliest memory was going to my grandma’s house, milking cows and collecting the eggs from the chickens. If I could choose, I’d be bare feet with animals all around me and living in a tree house. Like Tarzan and Jane, that’s my dream. I’m at my happiest around nature.”

The blonde beauty – who previously dated ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ star Leonardo DiCaprio – claims she’s unhappy that ”disrespectful and invasive” paparazzi have found her hidden eco-luxury home in Costa Rica as she believes they should be more considerate of her private life.

Gisele explained: ”I’m a model as a job, I’m Gisele, the daughter of Valdir and Vania, I’m a woman, I am a model. When I go home and shut the door, that’s it. If I want to expose something, it should be my choice. I think the paps should bother with the people that enjoy that kind of thing.”

The mother-of-two has confessed that she is planning to take a step back from her busy work schedule next year in a bid to spend more time with her family.

Insisting she has no plans to retire completely, however, she added to Vogue magazine: ”Not that I’m never going to work again, but I feel like there are periods to your life and priorities shift.

”I started when I was 14; before, I was just myself, and now I have a family of my own. My family is my number one focus. I’m looking forward to what the beautiful future holds.”

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Nouvelles quotidiennes

Howl with wolves at Algonquin Park

To help educate people about the misunderstood creatures, Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park hosts wolf howling expeditions each Thursday in August – provided weather and wolves cooperate, reports Canoe Travel.

Each Wolf Howls event – offered free-of-charge to park visitors – begins with an educational slide show to set the tone of the evening. Participants then load into vehicles and follow park staff to a location along Highway 60. The staff howl into the woods and everyone waits to see if the wolves will respond.

Algonquin Park is home to as many as 30 wolf packs with about five packs roaming around Hwy. 60 each day, and August marks the best opportunity to get a response.

"The key thing about August is that the wolf pups are big enough to be running around but they can’t stay with the pack and hunt, so the adults leave them at a site that we call a rendezvous site, which is kind of like a playpen area," explained Rick Stronks, chief park naturalist.

"The adults might leave them there for days or weeks at a time, so we know that there is a very good chance that the pups and the adults will be there night after night and that’s really the key to our success."

While not every wolf howl expedition is successful in contacting the creatures, the trip is still worthwhile, says Stronks: "While you are waiting you may be lucky enough to see the Northern lights, hear the call of an owl or listen to migrating birds."

Categories
Nouvelles quotidiennes

Howl with wolves at Algonquin Park

To help educate people about the misunderstood creatures, Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park hosts wolf howling expeditions each Thursday in August – provided weather and wolves cooperate, reports Canoe Travel.

Each Wolf Howls event – offered free-of-charge to park visitors – begins with an educational slide show to set the tone of the evening. Participants then load into vehicles and follow park staff to a location along Highway 60. The staff howl into the woods and everyone waits to see if the wolves will respond.

Algonquin Park is home to as many as 30 wolf packs with about five packs roaming around Hwy. 60 each day, and August marks the best opportunity to get a response.

"The key thing about August is that the wolf pups are big enough to be running around but they can’t stay with the pack and hunt, so the adults leave them at a site that we call a rendezvous site, which is kind of like a playpen area," explained Rick Stronks, chief park naturalist.

"The adults might leave them there for days or weeks at a time, so we know that there is a very good chance that the pups and the adults will be there night after night and that’s really the key to our success."

While not every wolf howl expedition is successful in contacting the creatures, the trip is still worthwhile, says Stronks: "While you are waiting you may be lucky enough to see the Northern lights, hear the call of an owl or listen to migrating birds."

Categories
Nouvelles quotidiennes

Quebeckers vacation close to home in summer

Many Quebeckers choose to stay close to home when vacationing, according to a ranking published by Ulysses bookstore, reports La Presse.

The most popular destinations – according to the number of travel books and maps sold by the bookseller – include the Laurentides, the Eastern Townships, and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean.

In terms of popularity, the U.S. followed right behind, thanks to its weaker dollar and warmer climate. The northeastern states came in second place, with the southwest following in third.

European destinations came further down on the list, with the U.K. in sixth and Paris in seventh. Barcelona, Spain came in eighth, while southern Italy ranked 11th and Croatia was 28th.

Seasons, of course, are a major deciding factor. During the winter months, the popularity of southern destinations sees a sharp increase, while during the summer, the opposite is true. In the summer rankings, only one tropical destination made the list – Costa Rica in 29th place.