Category Archives: Hubbard Fellowship

Hubbard Fellowship Post – Mother Owl

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This post was written by Evan Barrientos, one of our Hubbard Fellows.  Evan is a talented writer and photographer and I encourage you to check out his personal blog.

Warning: This post contains images of fluffy, baby animals.

Along the edge of one of our prairies there is a road lined with mature cottonwood trees. Although I appreciate the wide-open prairie environment, I like to take a walk once a week in the shady security of this miniature forest. The rustling leaves are soothing, shade is a novelty, and the trees bring back memories of hiking in New York’s forests. I also happen to see a lot of interesting wildlife behavior when I go here. One morning in July I was jogging down this road when I spotted an Eastern Screech-Owl being mobbed by Baltimore Orioles and American Robins. I sprinted back to my house, grabbed my video equipment, and hurried back before the action was over.

For several minutes I filmed as the orioles and robins viciously pelted the seemingly harmless owl (click here for a previous post I wrote about this behavior). It amazed me that the owl could withstand such harassment so patiently. Despite several painful-looking beak-jabs to the back of the head, the brave little owl outlasted the assault and was finally left in peace. Only then did I realize why she had refused to leave; she had babies to look after!

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In a nearby branch I finally noticed three owl fledglings trying to sleep. In addition, there was a second adult screech-owl who seemed equally intent upon sleeping unnoticed. I don’t know which adult was which gender, but I like to imagine that it was the mother who bravely endured blows from the angry songbirds in order to let her family sleep in peace while the lazy dad took a nap. Either way, I always find it touching when I see animals put such great effort into protecting their young.

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On another subject, all three birds in this post are species that used to be much less common in Nebraska. Before Europeans arrived, trees were hard to come by in central Nebraska. Over the last century, however, trees from the East have spread into the state as people have planted them around their crops for windbreaks and around their homes for shade. With trees leading the way, many forest species from the East, such as Eastern Screech-Owls, have ventured into Nebraska and the Great Plains. The ecological effects of this tree march are more complex than I’ll go into here, but overall they’re detrimental to grassland plant and wildlife populations. Here are just a few examples:

  1. Trees provide perches for aerial predators (such as owls and hawks), which increases predation rates of prairie grouse and mammals.
  2. Tree corridors provide safehavens for woodland nest predators (such as skunks and opossums) as well as brood parasites (i.e. Brown-headed Cowbirds), who venture into the prairies for prey/hosts. Thus, wildlife in small prairies bordered by trees experience abnormally high rates of nest depredation and parasitism.
  3. If uncontrolled, trees form dense canopies that shade out prairie plants, which are adapted to full sun. This makes it harder for prairie fauna that rely on prairie plants for food and shelter to survive. The result is a positive feedback loop: the presence of trees encourages more trees to grow.
Doom on the horizon? The trees bordering this prairie are the same ones that love walking through.

Trouble on the horizon? The trees bordering this prairie are the same ones that I love walking through.

So what’s the takeaway? Our relationship to nature is complicated. Nothing is simply good or evil. On one hand, trees may seem like a existential threat to prairies, but on the other, I value them for their soothing shelter and the species they harbor. I think the key to this dilemma is diversity. Although I appreciate woodlands, I also appreciate prairies. But healthy prairies are so much more scarce in eastern Nebraska than wooded roadsides, and grassland species are generally in decline, while most woodland species are stable or even increasing.* Therefore, I would choose to cut down trees that are encroaching upon prairies. This does not mean that I think all trees in Nebraska are evil and must be destroyed, just that we need to keep them in check in order to maintain a balance between the two habitats.

*To make things even more complicated, while tree invasion is a real problem, cottonwoods are actually failing to reproduce in Nebraska. To germinate, cottonwoods need floods to scour vegetation and deposit sediment. Now that Nebraska’s rivers are regulated by dams, these floods happen much less often. As a result, we’re seeing very few young cottonwoods taking their parents’ place.

Hubbard Fellowship – When is a Gopher not a Gopher?

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This post is written by Kim Tri, one of our two Hubbard Fellows for this year.  Kim is an excellent artist, as well as an ecologist, writer, and land steward.  As you can see, her drawings of animals are exceptional.

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13-lined ground squirrel.  Ink drawing by Kim Tri.

 

When it’s a streaked gopher!  That is the common name that I grew up with for the thirteen-lined ground squirrel (Ictidomys or Spermophilus tridecemlineatus).  Imagine my disappointment when I found out that actual gophers are 1) not closely related, and 2) look like this:

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Plains pocket gopher (Geomys bursarius).  Ink drawing by Kim Tri.

 

Pocket gophers are one of the few animals that I would describe as “ugly.”  Note: I do not use this word to describe pugs, star-nosed moles, aye-ayes, vultures, or a number of animals termed by most people as “ugly.”

As far as I can tell, the misnomer of “streaked gopher” (with streaked inexplicably being pronounced with two syllables) is unique to my family, as I have yet to find anyone who has ever heard of it who is not related to me.  “Striped gopher,” however, is a more common name, especially back in Minnesota, or the Gopher State (the MN Dept. of Natural Resources refers to it as the “Minnesota Gopher” on their website).  It is partially responsible for this unfortunate mascot.  University of Minnesota students will freely admit that mascot of Goldy Gopher was designed by someone who did not actually know what gophers look like.

Both thirteen-lined ground squirrels and pocket gophers are rodents, but the relationship ends there.  I. tridecemlineatus belongs to the family Sciuridae, which includes your familiar tree squirrels and chipmunks, and your less familiar (depending on where you live) ground squirrels, prairie dogs, flying squirrels, and marmots.  Pocket gophers belong to the family Geomyidae, which includes pocket gophers, end of list.  Both animals dig burrows and spend time underground, but since pocket gophers eat mainly roots and tubers, they need rarely come up to the surface and have taken burrowing to the next level.  They have oversize front paws for digging and lips that close behind their massive incisors, so that they can excavate with their chompers without getting a mouthful of dirt.  Their eyes and ears are small and weak because sight and hearing are not very important underground.  Thirteen-lined ground-squirrels, on the other hand, are part of the group of spermophiles, or “seed-lovers,” (though they eat a lot of insects as well) and consequently spend much of their time foraging aboveground and are less specialized for burrowing.  They’ve kept the squirrel’s nimble forepaws as well as good eyesight and hearing for detecting predators and prey alike.

I’ve always been enamored of thirteen-lined ground squirrels.  I mean, look at that face.  Then look at the clever little paws, sleek body, and intricate design.  Growing up, I could watch them sometimes from the kitchen window, and can do the same here.  We share the yard with a family of them, and it delights me to see them.  They build little tunnels through the pile of grass clippings that have accumulated by the walkway and use them as cover while they forage in the backyard.  Their favorite pile seems to be right outside of my window, so I have had plenty of opportunity to watch the little ones playing and growing throughout the summer.  They never paid me much heed, so I just assumed that they couldn’t see me through the window screen.  After spending quite a while standing not very still within a few feet of a foraging ground squirrel, I have since concluded that they simply don’t care about people.  They know that they can be underground before I can even bend down to snatch them.

Disclaimer: I am not bashing pocket gophers.  Their adaptations for burrowing make them pretty cool, at least to me, as do their “pockets”—cheek pouches for carrying food which extend all the way onto their shoulders and can be turned inside out.  I just think they’re ugly.

But, you know, the more I look at them, the more I see some cute in them.  I mean, look at that face.

pocket gopher head

 

P.S. If you want to see how Minnesotans feel about real gophers rather than people in striped gopher costumes, look up Viola Gopher Days, which take place near my home town.  I personally have never been and can’t decide whether I find it grisly or folksy.