I've worked part time for 15 years at a golf course west of Portland, Oregon. I've often observed the comings and goings of the beasts, birds and critters eking out a life that includes the course's unkempt corners.
Opportunistic ducks and coots, more every year, have colonized the multi-acre pond in the picture. There are probably over 100 widgeons, mallards, buffleheads and coots there this winter. In the picture's background, you can see smaller trees that grow within a lesser bog, about 50 yards from the large pond.
When some of the ducks and coots feel crowded in the large pond, a dozen or more will fly (or waddle) the few yards into the smaller bog. And it's within the smaller bog that my story focuses, below the coiled orange viper.
The Backyard Science group regularly publishes The Daily Bucket, which features observations of the world around us. Insects, weather, meteorites, climate, birds, flowers and anything natural or unusual are worthy additions to the Bucket and its comments. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located. Each note is a record that we can refer to as we try to understand the patterns that are unwinding around us.
Here is a close-up of the smaller bog. It's about 50 yards long and 20 yards wide. During the winter season, the rainfall pools about a foot or two deep beneath the trees, mostly birches. In the Spring the mallards often shelter their ducklings in those thickets.
I'd rarely seen coyotes on the course over the last 15 years. I work a couple of hours before dawn, driving a small ATV with a noisy engine and headlight, so I could hardly sneak up on them. I feel they only let me see them if they wanted, or didn't care.
I saw a couple there before dawn this fall. They stared at me until I approached to 30 feet away, and then they frolicked off into the pre-dawn mists.They looked like skinny German Shepherds. Wiki says the average male weighs about 20-40 lbs. (stock photo follows)
The other workers have spotted the coyote pair also during their predawn work shifts, sometimes near the course clubhouse. The coyotes seem unafraid.
I rake the sand bunkers, and while months go by without seeing coyotes, I'd often found their paw prints in the sand. Sometimes their paw print patterns looked like they were playing, dashing back and forth. In one bunker, their tracks always headed in a straight line off the course to the northwest.
Although a coyote litter averages about 6 pups, and coyotes often run in small packs. I've never seen more than one or two sets of tracks. Oddly, I've never heard them howl or bark. Perhaps, when they're on the course, they are all business.
Coyotes usually den in cave-like situations such as hollowed fallen tree trunks, or under ledges. Relatively manicured vinyards and row crops surround the course's immediate vicinity, so I am thinking they might den in the underbrush of a "wood lot" (small forest) on a nearby farm within a mile or two.
A 6-foot-high hurricane fence, topped with barbed wire, encloses the golf course. I cannot picture the coyotes cleanly hurtling a fence that tall. Yet they are on the course. Instead I imagine they can turn into smoke, pass through the fence and reconstitute.
The Internet alleges many legends about Coyote the Trickster, loosely attributed to Native Americans; the Coyote gave us the buffalo, caused Mt. Shasta to erupt to cook his salmon, and helped God hang the stars in the sky.
But none of the legends claimed Coyote could change into smoke. As I scout the fenceline, I think Coyote must be able to sneak under the fence where storm water flows have carved their sinuous rills and eroded a coyote-sized passage.
Coyote had plenty of time to figure it out. Its ancestors have occupied North America since 40 million years ago. The modern coyotes evolved about 100,000 years ago. The coyotes I see may be the Northwest Coast coyote (C. l. umpquensis). That is one of the 18 subspecies that roam this continent from the Arctic Circle to near the Equator.
Every winter I've found a few coot bodies scattered around the golf course, and some handfuls of killdeer (a robin-sized plover) feathers, and the occasional gutted bullfrog, indicating active predators. I always figured hawks claimed the killdeer and plucked them on the spot, herons or raccoons nailed the frogs, and some winter ailment dispatched the coots, whose bodies were often unmarked. This winter I noticed something also preyed on the widgeons, a small duck.
Last month, excessive rainfall and a series of morning frosts combined to prevent us from mowing the course for several days. That allowed me to examine the undisturbed course grounds at length.
I checked near where I'd last see Coyote cantering across the course. I found several spots that looked like small explosions of feathers.
One Winnebago Indian legend described how Coyote tricked the ducks by saying he would sing songs, if the ducks danced with their eyes closed. When the ducks fell for it, Coyote simply clubbed them, one by one. So maybe these are the spots where Coyote persuaded the ducks to dance.
In some spots the feather trails began at the bog's water edge. I wonder if a coyote hadn't just waded in and grabbed a sleeping widgeon who drifted into 6 inch deep water.
I found sprays of coot feathers near the bog's edges also. Alive, the coots seem such a drab black, but their left-behind feathers shimmered with blue.
I also noticed several piles of probable (dog-sized) coyote poop near the golf course ponds. I pried open a weathered coyote turd. It was about 1.5 x 3 inches, tarry, and firm like a barely ripened avocado. I did not see any teeth, bones, or feathers within it.
Now I'll leave you, with that image of me on my knees in the muddy ground, worrying a coyote turd with a golf tee, in the name of Backyard Science.
Afterword: I credit Paul Radin's transcription of the Winnebago Tribe narrative for the legend of the dancing ducks. http://en.wikipedia.org/.... See also:http://www.hotcakencyclopedia.com/.... Other Internet sources allege this was a Crow legend.
Now It's Your Turn What's interesting to you? Please post your own observations and your general location in the comments.
Thank you for reading. I'll work this morning so I'll respond to comments before lunchtime.
"Spotlight on Green News & Views" will be posted every Saturday at 1pm and Wednesday at 3:30 pm Pacific Time on the Daily Kos front page. Be sure to recommend and comment in the diary.