Raccoon Squabble

Over the past two days, the only animals frequenting the dead fish sushi bar and captured by the camera were raccoons. Yesterdays shots were of backs and tops of heads. Today's, below, included many views of two teenage raccoons fighting, with absolutely no regard for getting wet. No hesitation to dive right in the icy water!

Teenage Raccoons in a Snarling Match

Coyotes Look for Dead Fish, Too!

The only photo taken of an animal over the past 24 hours is of a coyote, very surprised by the camera. Over the past year we have captured many thousands of glimpses of deer, birds, foxes, opossums, skunks, mice, cats, and squirrels. And a few coyotes. One has only a single eye that reflects the infrared beam of the camera. What is unique about coyotes, though, is that the camera captures only a single photo of a coyote. 

The camera setting we use takes 10 photos, one second apart when it detects motion. It seems that coyotes are so sensitive to the red light that they jump away before a second photo is taken. During the day the camera doesn't need to illuminate the scene but at night it does. All other animals seem to ignore the camera's red light except for coyotes. They jump so fast and far that they are out of range within a second. The photo below is the only one with a wild animal. Our dogs usually trigger the camera before I'm able to disarm it so we have many photos of Belle and Cupcake.

Coyote Surprised by the Camera

Belle

Both an Otter and a Mink Checking Out Sushi

This time the camera captured many photos of what seem to be both a mink and an otter. The photos below are the most clear of many. They are both very active critters!

This One Seems to be a Mink

This One Dove Underwater a Few Frames Later

This One Never Got Wet!

Mink and Raccoon Dine on Fish

In addition to many crows, last night and this morning two mammals triggered the trail camera: a mink and a raccoon. Time stamps are visible on the photos.

Midnight Romp Through the Sushi Bar

Raccoon Nibbling on Fish

Mink on a Morning Jaunt 

Boiling Maple Sap to Syrup and Upgrading Dead Fish

Sap to Syrup Operation

Our 14 taps produced more than 20 gallons of sap in the last 24 hours and we're struggling to find enough five-gallon pails to hold sap for processing. We've covered the stove with seven pots that progressively concentrate maple sugar. To avoid losing a large batch by accidentally burning syrup to carbon (it's happened!), we try and store each day's yield of finished maple syrup that boils at 104C in quart canning jars. It's not that hard to keep from adding new sap to yesterday's ever more yellow concentrate and routinely consolidating the finishing syrup, see photo below.

Wood-burning Cook Stove with Seven Pots Boiling Sap to Syrup

Fish That Die Feed Other Animals

Fish that die from natural causes become food for a variety of animals. I wondered what sort of animals were rooting around the piles of small dead fish that accumulated near the outlet of the pond so I set up a trail camera that automatically takes photos of anything within its view that moves. Many crows have visited the fish sushi bar along with a single turkey vulture. I was hoping to see some mammals - but so far: none.

Two Crows Eating Fish

Turkey Vulture Snacking on Dead Sunfish

Tapping Sugar Maples, Attracting Deer, and Bubbling Fish

Gathering Maple Sap Exercise Program

This week warmed up enough for maple tree roots to pump sugary sap into trunks. It took quite a few days of above freezing weather to start the sap flowing because the ground has been covered by a few feet of snow and nighttime temperatures were, until recently, often in single digits. It takes less than five minutes to drill a hole, tap in a six-inch tube, slide on a gallon plastic jug and fasten it to the tube. We’ve found vinegar jugs the best but milk vessels also work. I drill an undersize hole into the upper hollow finger loop that each vessel has so the tube fits very snugly to prevent midges and mosquitoes from getting into the jug. We rarely have to screen the sap.

Gallon Milk Jugs as Maple Sap Collection Vessels

The sap level in the translucent jugs is readily visible from far away and when days don’t go much above freezing or stay there very long, it takes awhile for the tree to fill a jug. We have 14 taps going and, so far, only one tree fills its jug in 24 hours. The others barely produce a quart. To prevent losing any sap from the productive tree, I slipped a connector on the tube and ran a longer plastic tube into a five gallon covered pail. This morning I checked the line of trees and none dripped more than a pint of sap since last evening. So I went the quarter mile home without having to carry extra weight.

Gallon Vinegar Jug Collecting Maple Sap

It won’t be long when I’ll have to carry two full five-gallon pails (80 pounds) and sometimes even twice a day when the exercise program really kicks in. It’s all for a good cause: it takes 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of maple syrup and our friends and family can readily consume four or five gallons over a year.

Recycling Nutrients

A long time ago we lived on a stream that salmon used for spawning. Many thousands swam upstream in late summer to mate, lay eggs and die. Our dog thought it a terrible waste to see thousands of fish rot along the edges of the stream so she rolled on them and ate as many as she could. She couldn’t digest them so had to throw them up, only to try again a bit later, or the next day. I’ve since read articles on how salmon benefit valleys where they spawn. The nutrients they carry from the deep ocean end up well distributed around the valley courtesy of the birds and mammals that eat live and dead salmon.

One afternoon we counted more than 40 eagles waiting to digest their last meal so they could eat again. None of the salmon lying along the stream had eyes because seagulls fought among each other to pick them out these delicacies: breaking through salmon skin was too much work! ….but not for eagles.

Deer Dropping Fertilizer

I think of them when I see deer and rabbit droppings all over the snow covering our fields. These herbivores cover wide ranges and deposit many droppings where they rest. It’s great to see a herd of deer spend hours in our grove of Douglas Fir and then later see pounds of droppings everywhere. Each year we use the top of one of these trees to celebrate winter holidays and the trunks and large branches for firewood. It’s great that the deer gather nutrients from miles around and the fertilize our fields and fir trees without me having to lift a finger!

Deer Droppings with Tracks Under Fir Trees

Thousands of Fish Die from Lack of Oxygen

Our neighbor has a 10+ acre pond that is very long. Every year we discuss placing a bubbling system in the deep end that would allow fish to survive the winter. Last winter fish older than two years died under the ice from lack of oxygen. We had a thaw in January, 2014, that opened up much of the ice and thoroughly oxygenated the pond that lasted long enough for the smaller fish to survive. The odor was pretty heavy for a few days in the spring but it didn’t take long for mammals and birds to gobble up the few hundred large bass and sunfish.

Large Pond Where Fish Died From Lack of Oxygen

This year the very deep snow on ice that formed in December and hasn’t yet melted. No January thaw.

Two+ Year-old Sunfish Died from Lack of Oxygen

The edges are melting in some places and reveal thousands of dead fish, including even last summer’ fry, see photos below. We’ll catch stock from our pond with enough pairs for them to repopulate this much larger pond. I hope this fall they invest in a bubbling system large enough to enable their whole pond of fish to thrive. Insects, mollusks, salamanders, frogs and turtles that also overwinter underwater should also benefit from well-oxygenated water. Some of them may die but won't be noticed since they bury themselves in the mud.

Summer's Young Fish Didn't Make it Through the Winter

Less than a Quarter of the Heating Season Left!

March 2 is typically the day when three quarters of the annual heating degree-days are behind us. They measure how many degrees “colder than 65F” over a 24 hour period there are. Fuel delivery folk use this values to estimate when it’s appropriate to automatically refill oil or propane fuel tanks without bothering homeowners. It’s been going below zero many nights here for quite a long time so we’ve been burning more wood than usual but we still have a ways to go before we’re halfway through our supply, see photos below. The wood stacked on the left we will burn next year but hope to begin harvesting solar energy to diminish what wood we need. I’ll try and fill up the empty portion on the right that we burned this season as soon as the weather improves so we’ll have enough fuel for the 2016- 2017 season even if the solar project doesn’t get finished or has issues.

Right Side of Wood Crib Empty: March 8, 2015

Lots of Wood Left for Last Quarter of This Heating Season and For 2015-16

It’s still not warm enough for maple sap to start running. I tapped one tree yesterday and the jug below the tap is still empty. Air temperatures warmed up to a few degrees above freezing for a few hours each of the past two days but more than two feet of snow cover will probably delay tree roots from pumping sap up trunks for a few more days. The weather forecast for later in the week, though, looks good. It’s important to capture early sap runs because some years the season is very short. Trees need warm days and freezing nights to pump sap and once temperatures stay above freezing, the season is over. We’ll have very unhappy daughters if they run out of syrup before the following season flow.

Heavy Snow Has Covered Everything for More Than Two Months

The size of the hole in the ice on our pond varies with temperature. The small compressor pumps the same amount of air into the air-stones at bottom that makes thousands of bubbles to buoy up warmer water from the bottom. Really cold weather where it doesn’t get much above zero shrinks the size of the hole to half the diameter than when temperatures go above 20. Ice rings that freeze around the edge record this activity until new snow covers them, see photo below.

Diminished Aeration Hole in Pond Ice with Four Foot Drifts in Foreground