The Sad Porcupine

The porcupine in this photograph is so well
camouflaged that you may have to click on the
image to view it large in a new window.

If you ever go into the woods with John, and if he suddenly jumps back and says "Uh oh," then you should duck for cover. He is the most knowledgeable naturalist I have ever met. If he is surprised in the woods, it is a bad surprise.

We were hiking in the Mt Kearsarge forest behind the town dump and up the hill. I was photographing yellow club fungus. John was walking the area, talking to me, saying how he had never seen so many porcupine quills in one area. He was exploring outside of a porcupine den. He identified the entrances of it and was observing the tracks and surrounding vegetation — seeing what the porcupine was eating nearby. He again looked at the glacial erratic boulder that was 15 feet tall under which the porcupine had her den. And that is when he cursed and jumped backward. The porcupine had been right there all the time, watching him nervously, camouflaged by her coat which was the color of the quartz flecked granite boulder.

Once we caught our breath, John observed that porcupines were usually placid and calm. This one was very tense and nervous. She was not behaving normally. John feared other predators — perhaps something was still in the area.

The quills littering the forest floor were both baby and adult quills. The mother porcupine was alone. There was evidence of struggle in the vegetation.

After studying the tracks, trails and clues, John told me that a fisher cat, the only natural predator of porcupines, had raided the den and carried off and killed the porcupine pup. The mother had defended her baby valiantly but she couldn't withstand a fisher cat attack.

She was now alone and nervous. John climbed all the way to the top of the boulder to find another view of the mom. This spooked her out of the den, which is when I got two shots of her.

We left her in relative peace and followed the fisher cat trail. We soon lost the trail. The fisher could have gone up a tree to eat its prey.

You can see photos of her den and habitat in the slide show below.

Porcupine Set

Buddy and the Porcupine

View Behind the Dump Hike in a larger map

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Chasing Porcupines at Night

When the quills lie up on the back, you know the porky is upset with you.

John saw this porcupine one night in September. He shined his large flashlight while I followed the porky in the dark, seeing the land only through the viewfinder. I literally could not see a thing and relied on John's directions of where to step. I was happy to get such clear results. I had set the camera on automatic to avoid as few shooting errors as possible under these circumstances.

We were invaded by porcupines this year. We thought they came because of the apples, but we have since found three porcupine dens that show evidence of them being here a long time. Perhaps they had a population explosion or something. But they are eating the apple and maple trees. And the barn. Buddy the Cat won’t even go outside when a porcupine is around (probably because of his last encounter with one, seen here).

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Pesky Porcupines

Porcupine as seen from backdoor
Barton Mountain ridgeline in the back

What a day today. The roads are so iced that the town plow has chained up while it salts the road. Nothing to do but stay inside and do … something.

I'm still keeping an eye on the porcupines. They don't appear every day. It's more like every third day, so I'm wondering what else they are eating. Luckily, I can see them from the windows in the back mudroom. Unfortunately, my tripod is in the car and it won't be until today that I can get it out. So all of these shots are handheld. I did make a tripod of my elbows on my walker but it wasn't enough for the amount of digital zoom I used.

Digital zoom; eye is visible despite snow and handheld shake

I've learned more about porcupines. Their bellies are not quilled and are very soft and vulnerable. In the photo below, you can see that. When they sleep, their head faces a back wall of the den, and their tail faces the entrance. They swing their tail at predators and the quills release upon contact. So they are pretty invulnerable but they still have a couple predators, predominately the dreaded fisher cat.

Vermont had to reintroduce fishers because they are so reviled that they had been extirpated a hundred or so years ago. But they are back and as vicious as ever. And they love porcupines. The balance of porcupines in the wild is back in check now because of the fishers.

More digital zoom; underbelly and claws visible

Fisher (Pekania pennanti)
(c) Jeff Hullstrung

Lucy loves porcupine days. She wants outside constantly and only comes in for warming. She knows where the den is under the barn and she tracks their movements all day. Porcupines are supposed to be nocturnal, and I know mine are out and about at night, but they are active in the day, also. When they are up a tree, Lucy can even spot them!

Lucy is watching the porcupine shown above in the tree.

Porcupines do not clean the scat out from their den. The scat can become so deep that it spills out of the den. No one knows why. 

Amelia came by on Thanksgiving night to drop off a dinner for me, so I opened the garage doors and turned on the outside light. She turned off the lights and closed the doors when she left. In the morning, Lucy went nuts. She excitedly ranged all over the garage, and even thoroughly scanned the rafters of the garage. That's when I became nervous. She explored the garage without hackles so I knew there was not a danger like bear. Sort of. Lucy's definition of danger and mine differ, so I asked her to come back in before she found an animal. I kept the doors open so that whatever it was could leave. I am very fortunate that Lucy has never once attacked another animal. She simply alerts with deafening barking and shows me where they are.

Yesterday morning I went out to the garage and found a lot of scat lined across the garage doors … well it was actually everywhere but most prominent in front of the doors. I found a footprint, too. Neither has been identified but because of the porcupine activity, I strongly suspect that I had inadvertently trapped on in the garage overnight. The scat has the cashew-shape of porcupine. The print is the right size for porcupine but is ill-defined. I have perennial problems with red squirrels trying to move into the attic every winter, so the scat could be theirs, also. Red squirrels are not nocturnal, though.

I had my measuring tape with me, but it  did not work!

The scat was everywhere.

One poor print.

We had a wonderfully odd Thanksgiving. I hope you did, also.

Saturday's Critters at
Viewing Nature with Eileen

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Those Are Not Bird Nests

Those are not bird nests.

When I let Lucy out after supper, just at dusk, I looked up at my favorite tamarack tree as I always do and said, "Aww, there are two bird nests from the summer up there." But then I stopped and said, "No! Those nests were not there yesterday or last week or this morning! It's the porcupines!" And I groaned. 

Just after the tamaracks lost their needles (they are a deciduous conifer tree), I saw the evidence of my Barn Porcupine damaging the tree. I showed it to my kids and they chuckled. 

Porcupines ate the bark off the left branch.

The kids didn't know what they were looking at, so I pointed it out to them:

But even I was questioning if it was porkies eating the bark because it isn't the strongest branch and the damage was way out at the end—where the tenderest bark is. Porcupines can be huge like the one that is living under my barn. In the top photo, my Barn Porcupine is on the right on the trunk of the tree and presumably his smaller lady love, who may or may not be under the barn living with him, is on the left here in the photo:

Here is Lady Porcupine

This was a handheld shot with my bug camera (I have lent Amelia my huge camera with my long lens and think I have to get it back now). I used digital zoom while I braced my arms on my walker while sitting on a stool in the laundry room with the back door open heating the entire outdoors with the price of oil what it is.

I'm going to call Fish & Wildlife for advice about my trees. I have over 100 tamaracks that my husband carefully tended for me because I love them so.  Plus the apple orchard, which porcupines also love. Plus the sugar maples that they love that we used to tap. 

A porcupine's only natural enemy is a fisher cat. Fisher cats are vicious wolverine-type furry animals that will attack for no reason at all and are legend for killing house cats and small dogs. I have had them trying to get into my house in the summer through open windows. I close all first floor windows at night in the summer now. But I haven't seen a fisher here for years. I don't want them back. And I don't want the porcupines to kill my trees. And I don't want them shot.

The same tamarack in 2013. It was much smaller.
In November they turn this brilliant orange and are 
seen blazing on mountain sides everywhere here.
The boulder is Pansy Rock where Angel Pansy,
a disabled cat, was buried by my husband. 

More of my porcupine adventures can be found here.

More about tamaracks can be found here.

Saturday's Critters at
Viewing Nature with Eileen

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Sights Behind the Dump — Geography

We see so much on our hikes. There are too many photos to post. But I have chosen a selection of photographs that highlight what I learned on the hike, whether it be about the plants, animals or geography of the area we hiked in. You can click on any photo to see it full size in a new window. If you click on a text link you will be taken to my Flickr set for the photograph. All of my hike photos are in my Photowalks & Hikes Collection. I call this hike the Behind the Dump Hike because we walked to the dump and then left it behind as we entered the Mt. Kearsarge State Forest.

Above is a quartz flecked granite boulder on John's property. You can't see it well here but it is studded with garnets. The boulder is in an old abandoned garnet mine here. These small mines stud the country side in New England. Granite, quartz, mica, garnets, feldspar and other minerals were mined by local people.

The photos above and below are of the unnamed brook in the forest that we followed up the hill and back on this hike. There were beautiful falls such as these and quiet flats where the brook quietly burbled.


Above is a stone wall that we suddenly came across near the crest of the hill. There was an old pasture here a couple of hundred years ago. It amazes me how the old people withstood the hardships of life in the hills and mountains long ago. It must have been extremely difficult to pasture your dairy herd up here. Nowadays, these ancient walls create wonderful habitat for all sorts of plants and animals.

In the photo above, if you are familiar with deer roads, you may just see a deer trail going from the left side of the brook, across it to the right side, and then forward towards the camera on the right. This is a well-used trail the deer use for water and fording.

Above is another deer ford across the brook. Another watering spot for them.

Last we see above, the "idyllic" spot where the sad porcupine lives. The brook falls on the left. To the right of the brook you see a whitish boulder with a small pool in front of it. That boulder (white looking because of the sun) is where the porcupine lives. She has a large den underneath with several entrances all around it. In my Sad Porcupine post you will see the up-close photos of the quills, the pool, and of course, the sad porcupine.

Behind the Dump Hike

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Tree

There are many birches in there, but it's on a tamarack.

This is my lucky week: the theme for this week's Photo Sunday is tree. I've got a few. Thousand. When I drove in the driveway on Sunday I saw the porcupine again but from this side of the house, it was closer. The photo makes it seem as if it is in the woods. It isn't. There is a small field behind the porcupine and the tamarack tree. I zoomed iPhone in as much as possible (10x) and got this shot above. 

You can tell it's on a tamarack by all of the cones.

I went in the house and got my tripod, bug camera and dog and went back to the driveway and settled in for a long photo shoot. That didn't happen. It was too cold and the wind began to blow down the mountainside. I never even set up the tripod. Also, the porcupine did not move. I took over 67 shoots and they are all the same (they only differ in zoomosity). At one point, trying to get the porcupine to move, I yelled, "Hey, porkie! Move a little. Show me your face!" Well, that got Lucy all excited and she ran to the tree and told the porkie the same thing in doggerel. I have learned that porcupines cannot see very well but their hearing and smell are very good. So it obviously ignored us. Kids at school, animals at home, now porcupines in the wild—they all ignore what they don't want to hear.

Same pose, just more zoom.
What looked to me like an eye or nose was simply a cone.

These porcupines are actually becoming boring. They move so little. They behave the same each time I see them. I need to learn more about them to see if I can find something to observe or watch for.

Photo Sunday at
Noah Clark

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Porcupine Day

This morning in the tamarack.

If I had doubts about the porcupine staying overnight in the garage, they are gone now. I pulled into the garage after school this afternoon and upon getting out of the car and turning, which takes a long time because of my knees, I saw a porcupine waddling and hopping towards the woods as quickly as possible. And that ain't very quick!

I can't close the garage door when I leave in the morning because the batteries on the remote are dead. I have the batteries but I can't figure out how to put them into the remote and I can't sync the remotes to the door opener without help. Until that comes, I'm sort of stuck here hosting porcupines in the garage (which is where trash is kept to keep it safe from bears … and now porcupines). 

Leaving the garage after I pulled in this afternoon.

I regret not having the presence of mind to shoot video of the porcupine racing into the woods. It was one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time. It was an exaggerated waddle and roll with hops off of the ground in between. 

If only they would appear on clear, sunny days! It seems to always be hazy and wet when they pop up.  I would give them names except I can't tell them apart unless they appear together. I have noticed that the first thing Lucy does when she leaves the house is check to see if there are porcupines in any of the trees. What a world!

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My Porcupine Clarity

Snow showers today. I caught one earlier and because it is such a quiet baking day, I played with the shots.

The two surviving cottonwoods at
the edge of the bog and orchard.

Flakes of snow.

I've spent some time reading to see how much damage the porcupines are going to create on the tamaracks. Foresters say they are awful pests. Naturalists note that the tamarack inner bark is a favorite of porkies. From "Tamarack Time" at Flandrum Hill:

The inner bark of tamaracks is edible and has many medicinal uses among Native Americans, among them, treating burns, wounds, inflammations and headaches. It’s also a favourite of porcupines. 

From another "Tamarack Time" article (pdf), author unknown, from the US Forestry Service:

Tamarack habitats are used by a variety of wildlife species. It provides cover from summer heat for bear, deer and moose, but is browsed by relatively few species. Snowshoe hares feed on twigs and bark, and porcupines feed on the inner bark. Spruce grouse and sharp-tailed grouse eat the needles and buds. Ospreys nest in the dead trees. Red squirrels cut and store the cones. Mice and voles eat large numbers of the seeds off the ground.

I checked all of my archives for photos I may have captured of all of the "pests" of tamarack. I have not found one. But I did possibly find the cocoon of Hyalophora columbia, a rare silkmoth that loves tamaracks. I brought the cocoon inside to raise, but it never developed. But my daughter, Amelia, did find an adult in nearby Brownington at school. That was such an exciting day for both of us! It was also an extremely frustrating day since I have been searching for these for 20 years and she found one in her first bug hunting year.

Columbia Silkmoth (Hyalophora columbia)

I have also documented the Larch Tolype (Tolype laricis), whose host is tamarack. It's a beautiful fuzzy gray moth with a brillo-type haircut. It was my husband's favorite moth each season.

Larch Tolype - Hodges#7673 (Tolype laricis)

Larch Tolype - Hodges#7673 (Tolype laricis)

I know that if I called Vermont Fish & Wildlife there would be no advice. It is illegal to move any wildlife to anywhere at all (even skunks). It is illegal to harass wildlife in any way (and who would want to?). And while it may be legal for me to shoot them, I won't.

My conclusion is that I will leave the porkies alone. I will stop resenting them. I will learn to appreciate their place in my biosphere. If they kill one or two tamaracks (they are chewing on two that I know of), I'll get over it. I will hope to see an osprey nest in a dead tamarack here. I will think of the grouse, deer, moose, mice and voles, and snowshoe hares that use the tamaracks. My snowshoe hare tracks, in fact, are always in the same area near them. I will keep track of the progression of tree gnawing. I have an entire new research project.

How high will a porcupine go?

They love the main stem inner bark the most.

I still don't know how they got out on
 those small branches on the left.
I read that many die from falling off trees.

I learned today that the two porcupines that I see are most likely denning together for the winter under the barn. I remembered that they love salt. I remembered when my foot slipped into an underground den of theirs up above the house in the cliffs and came out covered in porcupine poo. 

I'm going to ask Amelia to get me a tamarack shoot so that we can plant it indoors as the USFS author did.

Tamaracks can live up to 400 years. My attitude towards porcupines is irrelevant, trivial, compared to that.

Here is a YouTube video of a porcupine eating tamarack inner bark. 

Knowledge creates empathy.

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Buddy and the Porcupine

Yesterday we went to my mother's house to deliver corn that Sarah B., a CCV student of mine, had given me when she stopped at the house Saturday to drop off papers that had been due a week before. The dogs had not been in her fields since the cows had started coming up for the night and they went nuts. They ate the cow flops, and then rolled in them. It was nearly impossible to get them to run through the fields and work off their energy. Amy hosed them off before they got into the car but they were still stinky, and oh so stinky! I felt like I had brought the manure pit home with us. Amy gave them a bath and then went to see the demo derby at the fair.

Stepmother never called last night about the corn. Now I know why. She doesn't want it and doesn't even think it is any good! She wanted to know if I were the person who "snuck in and left the corn." But Jeanne told her how to add sugar to the water when she cooks it and it will be ok. I sigh. A lot. Never let a good deed go unpunished.

I sped home in a heavy rain because I thought I had left windows open. But I had closed them last night because it was so cold. So they were ok. I got these monster dogs outside on the hill and let them run a bit but the puppy wanted to go in and Scout was very agreeable to that! Then I went to the barn and there was Buddy just as I predicted. What a yowl he gave me! I carried him back to the house because he will not walk in the rain even if he has not eaten in 24 hours, which he hadn't.

Well, I found out why he was not home: porcupine quills in his face! Two short ones, that remind me of elephant tusks, stuck in two holes where whiskers should be. Amy said she will care for them when she gets home, no need to run to Dr. Judy. He is eating just fine. He doesn't even seem to notice them! I am wondering if he didn't run into a baby porcupine because these are short quills. I know nothing about these particulars but Amy will know or will find out tomorrow. If it were a baby though, wouldn't the mother attack him worse, hurting him more than he is now? Curious.

Amy took these photos.

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Skywatch Friday: Five Minutes

Across the road

The interior of the house was glowing pink, so Lucy and I went outside to relax after an awful day at school. It was the kind of day when you ask yourself why you are doing this job. Within five minutes, the sky changed so quickly that it was breathtaking. It was so centering that it healed me. But then, Lucy checked the porcupine that is living under the barn and all hell broke out. She never attacks animals, but she does vigorously warn me with an alarming bark and sometimes, like tonight, with her hackles up. I knew what she was excited about, so I praised her vigilance and told her it was fine. I wish I had gotten a photo of her happy face while she told me about the intruder. The porky this year is simply huge. It's so huge I'm surprised it can even walk.

45 seconds later

To the left: the flume of May Pond Brook

To the right, seeing Lowell Range through the trees

A tiny porcupine from two years ago.

Skywatch Friday

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