Kinglets Keeping Warm

I'm in Duluth, and have been here all day, killing time until my 2:30 AM shuttle to the Twin Cities airport, from where I will fly home (currently located in McKinney, TX) to spend a couple of weeks with my family for the holidays.  Today, I've had the joy of experiencing the blizzard (more snow accumulated today than in the entire month of December 2011) from the windows of various coffee shops and fast-food restaurants.

Luckily, I had some friends to keep me company for most of the day.

While hanging out and sipping hot chocolates, I've been finishing up Winter World by Bernd Heinrich, which is all about how animals deal with the weather we're currently experiencing here (see earlier blog post about turtles).  His inspiration for this book was observing golden-crowned kinglets, little birds that spend winters in very cold places.  How do they do it?

The scientific name for the kinglet genus is "regulus," which means "little king," a reference to the fact that kinglets appear to have a crown on their heads.  In the case of golden-crowned kinglets, that crown is golden and, in males, with a tinge of fiery red.  Kinglets are an evolutionarily distinct group of birds, and there are two species native to North America, the other being the ruby-crowned kinglet (guess what color its "crown" is!)  The golden-crowned kinglets are found throughout North America and Canada, meaning that many spend their winters in blustery New England.  How does such a small bird survive such cold weather?

A male golden-crowned kinglet I removed from a mist net while bird banding at Hawk Ridge in September, 2012.

One incredible aspect of the golden-crowned kinglets' winter survival skills is that they begin nesting in late March and April, when snowstorms are still common in New England.  Their nests are built inside of coniferous trees, deep enough that the overhanging branches will protect the nest from snow.  Furthermore, if snow covers a tree containing a nest, it adds an insulating layer from the cold.  Kinglet nests have been observed to contain a number of materials, one of the most common of which is grouse feathers.  The grouse feathers are the perfect size and shape to add significant warmth to the nest.  When it comes time to lay the eggs, kinglets lay 8-11, so many that they typically have two layers of eggs in the nest.  Furthermore, as soon as the hatchlings are old enough to stay warm on their own, a mother kinglet will get to work on a second nest, where she will lay another brood, a phenomenon known as "double clutching."  This sounds challenging, but 80% of kinglet hatchlings survive!

In order to keep their metabolism high enough to stay warm in the cold months, golden-crowned kinglets spend dawn until dusk foraging for food nonstop (the male apparently foraging for the female while she is on the nest).  The fat reserves they accumulate from this amount to about 0.3 grams, not nearly enough to survive a cold, winter's night.  How these 5-6 gram birds do that is still shrouded in mystery.

The two most likely spots a kinglet could lose heat is through the eyes and beak - thus, one simple method to keep warm is burying their "faces" in feathers when sleeping.  Also, kinglets appear to travel in groups of two or three.  Three kinglets huddling together during a cold night would prevent up to 37% of the heat loss they may otherwise experience individually.  However, it seems that the most important factor to keeping kinglets warm at night is shelter.  Where exactly they go is the question.  Heinrich suspected they were staying in abandoned squirrel nests, for example.  However, after following groups of kinglets near his cabin in Maine, it appeared that the kinglets did not have one set place to stay warm overnight.  Rather, because the kinglets were foraging until the moment it got dark, they were finding many different places to stay based on where they were when the sun set.

As I watch the snow falling outside the window of this cozy coffee shop, it is amazing to me to imagine a five-gram bird trying to stay warm out there tonight.  It doesn't surprise me that our knowledge of how they accomplish this is still minimal.  At the end of the day, I think Heinrich says it best: "They defy the odds and the laws of physics, and prove that the fabulous is possible."

Training Korppi

Korppi's first day at Wolf Ridge

At the beginning of the school-year, a new education animal joined the team at Wolf Ridge, a common raven we named "Korppi" (the Finnish word for "raven").  Working with Korppi quickly proved to be an entirely different situation than working with the education raptors.  Ravens are significantly smarter than raptors and require daily enrichment.

Korppi's enrichment comes in a number of forms.  Every day, we try to present her with a different challenge for obtaining her food, whether that involves hiding it somewhere in her enclosure, putting inside of some sort of puzzle-container, or simply giving her something that is challenging to eat (like an apple or a pumpkin).  Enrichment also comes in the form of training, which is something that I've been working with her on a daily basis.

When she first arrived, Korppi needed to simply become comfortable with me and learn to associate me with positive experiences.  So, I sat in the corner of her mew and threw raisins for her to eat.  Eventually, she would come closer and closer to me until she was eating raisins right next to me.  Then, she spent a couple of days eating raisins off of my shoes before she finally worked up the courage to take them right out of my fingers.

Korppi tentatively investigating a pine-cone full of raisins

My next project was to crate-train her; that is, train her to voluntarily go into a travel crate so we can take her in and out of her enclosure.  This started off pretty good, but we reached a point where Korppi was refusing to enter the crate (even though she clearly knew what I wanted) and was beginning to get aggressive with me.  I figured out that we hadn't built up enough trust together yet, especially since her only experience with crates up to this point was being involuntarily stuffed into and out of one before she arrived at Wolf Ridge.  Her negative association with crates coupled with our quickly fading trust with each other created a situation that was not working for either of us.

At this point, it was time to focus on building trust together, so I spent the next month training her to perch on a scale perch during which I fed her lots of raisins.  Throughout the course of the month, I began to notice a change in our sessions as Korppi became more relaxed with me, nipping at my fingers less and less.  I also became more relaxed and I think my awareness of my body language contributed to our progress.

And then, today happened.  As Korppi was perched on her scale perch, I had my arm extended just below the perch and without any prompting, she stepped onto my arm.  I was completely caught off guard and made sure to reward her immediately.  It was an exciting moment - a testament to the trust we've finally built with each other.  She stepped up on my arm five or six more times today without any hesitation.

A moment I'm always going to remember

Now that she trusts me enough to step up onto my arm, we can move forward with some other training activities when I get back from Christmas break.  Where will our training sessions go from here?  Sometimes, it seems like that is more Korppi's decision than mine.

Chicken Butchering

"Everyone who eats meat should get warm blood on their hands at least once a year." -Kurt Mead

In my attempts to learn more about food and how it gets to my dinner plate, naturalist friend Nikki and I decided to take up an opportunity to try out chicken butchering and preparation.  Kurt Mead, resident odonatalogist, ice fisherman, hunter, craftsman, baker, and all-around awesome guy, invited us over for his family's annual chicken butchering.  The Meads raise around 50 chickens every year, which they then use to feed their family (and the occasional family friend).  They're a great example of an environmentally conscious family in their decisions about where their meat comes from.

1. Butchering: The first step of the chicken butchering process is the most uncomfortable, in that it is the actual killing of the chickens.  There are a lot of different things I could say about this.  This was the first time I ever killed anything bigger than a fly, so I was a little unsure about how I was going to react.  However, once there in the situation, the actual act of butchering was much easier than I expected.  These chickens were clearly raised to be killed for meat and I recognize that in order to eat meat, someone has to kill it.  I think Kurt's quote is true - if you can't take responsibility for your meat, than you probably should think twice about eating it.

The killing is surprisingly easy.  A chicken is grabbed, hung upside down from its legs and then the neck is cut with one smooth slice of the knife.  The chicken is killed instantly and you just have to give it some time for the blood to empty out.

2. Deplucking: This was weirdly my favorite part of the process.  The chicken is submerged in hot water for about a minute to loosen up the feathers.  Then the chicken is placed in the deplucker, a machine Kurt personally built to expedite this process.  It's a large tub with rubber fingers coming out of the sides and a spinner on the bottom.  By spinning the chicken around the fingers and spraying it down with a hose, all of the feathers magically come off - it was awesome.

Nikki soaking a chicken before putting it in the deplucker.  Kurt supervising.

3. Gutting: Removing the innards of the chicken takes awhile, but this was pretty easy for me.  Having gutted hundreds of mice and small birds for our resident raptors, I've become quite familiar with the inner workings of animal organs.  After cutting off the legs, and the "pope's nose" (a slang term for the tail/butt), you basically just stick your hand in the chicken and start taking out the organs.  Chicken by chicken, we removed the intestines, gizzard, heart, lungs, liver, and crop.

Nikki pulling out a chicken esophagus.

4. Rinsing and Packaging: Once the chicken is all cleaned out, it's pretty easy to rinse it out and package it up.  The chickens are then put in the freezer and the Mead family now has enough chicken to last them the entire year.

Fully prepped chickens also make great hand puppets!

Kurt kindly let me take a chicken home for my own freezer.  I'm looking forward to cooking it as well. How often does someone get to go from having a live animal to having a meal on his/her plate and experience all the steps in between?

Turtles in the Winter

In thinking about my turtle story that inspired this new blog, I realized that, while it's a story I enjoy sharing, I know little about the biology behind it.  Yes, I'm aware that turtles hibernate under the ice and sometimes in the mud all winter long, but just how does a turtle survive such long, cold months?  How exactly do reptiles hibernate?

Luckily, the book I'm currently reading, Winter World by Bernd Heinrich had some answers.  In short, turtles are some of the most resilient creatures in the world, which makes sense if you think about how long they've been around.  Relative to most other animals, turtles evolved quite a long time ago.  It's possible that turtles lived right through the "global winter" of 64 million years ago that took the lives of many dinosaurs, so a measly six-months under the frozen ice is comparatively nothing.

One cool features turtles have to keep themselves alive is blood that acts as an anti-freeze.  Some turtles' bodies will completely freeze, but their internal organs are protected because the blood pumping through their bodies won't become frozen.

A painted turtle, frozen for the winter.

However, a greater problem exists in a turtles' need for oxygen.  While most animals that spend the winters under the ice have gills, turtles breathe with lungs and need a constant supply of oxygen.  Cold water retains oxygen better than warm water, so that helps.  Aquatic plants can photosynthesize and produce oxygen in the water too, but as soon as snow covers the top of a frozen lake, the plants can no longer get the sunlight they need and the rotting vegetations sucks the oxygen right back up.  The question of how turtles get their oxygen continues to stump researchers, but there are some studies out there that might provide us with some helpful clues.

One study led by Gordon R. Ultsch in 2000 investigated a colony of map turtles (Graptemys geographica) in the Lamoille River and Lake Champlain in Vermont.  They found that in winter, once the water drops to temperatures of 2-degrees-Celsius, the turtles simply pile themselves on top of each other deep at the bottom of the lake, and there they remain from November to March.  The researchers removed the turtles once a month to measure their blood acidity, lactate, oxygen, and carbon-dioxide levels.  As it turns out, the turtles remain aerobic (breathing oxygen) throughout the entire winter, simply by significantly lowering their metabolism.  This is possible because of their lack of physical movement and low body temperatures.  Furthermore, all the map turtles rested with their legs and heads fully extended, which seems to act as a way to maximize skin exposure to take up oxygen in the water.

In contrast to the map turtles, painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) hibernate in shallow water.  The advantage here is that shallow water heats up sooner in the spring, thus triggering the end of the hibernation period in the turtles.  A shorter hibernation period means a less intense impact on the metabolism.  However, shallow hibernation increases exposure to predators such as raccoons.  Painted turtles deal with this by burying themselves in the mud, but this cuts off all exposure to oxygen in the water.  It's all a trade-off.  Deep water means a longer hibernation but more available oxygen while shallow water means a shorter hibernation but with less oxygen available.

Like I mentioned, at the end of the day, the lesson is that turtles are resilient.  Hibernation takes a huge toll on their bodies, but it has worked for them for millions of years.  It's easy to forget all that's happening under the layer of ice on the lakes in winter.  If you're a turtle, it's a great place to be, but it certainly comes at a cost.

The Turtle

One of my favorite Ojibwe stories to share with students is about a turtle, a long time ago. In short, the turtle used to be best of friends with the birds, which was all well and good until the birds flew south every autumn and the turtle was left all alone for the long, cold winter.

One autumn, as the birds are gearing up for their southwardly flight, the turtle decides that he wants to come with this year. The birds don't undertand how that could be possible, since he can't fly, but he comes up with a plan. He proposes that crow and blackbird, the two strongest flyers, hold a stick with their legs. With his strong jaw, turtle will bite down on the stick, and thus the birds will carry him south for the winter.

It sounds a little silly, but the birds agree to give it a try. And for awhile, it works. The turtle sees so many amazing new things as they fly south. His curiosity is overwhelming, but he can't ask any questions because he would fall. Eventually, inevitably, his curiosity does get the better of him, and he opens up his mouth to ask crow and blackbird a question. Of course, the turtle falls down, down, down. When he hits the ground, he is so embarrassed that he crawls to the nearest river-bank, buries himself under the mud, and there he spends every winter forevermore.

In my last few times telling this story, I've come to realize that I am the turtle. The turtle was craving an adventure, the turtle was really curious to learn more about the natural world around him, the turtle was invested in his community (and the turtle really liked birds). The turtle in this story represents who I am as a naturalist.

Weaver Dunes, circa May 2011. This is me with a Blanding's turtle, quite different from the river turtle described above.

Thus, this blog. "Miskwaadesi" is the Ojibwe word for river turtle. I have recently been wishing I was recording my adventures, my observations, the things I've learned, and my stories as a naturalist. This is the place where I intend to do that. It's for me, of course, but for anyone else who's interested as well. Once more, I'm giving this blogging thing the ol' college try. We'll see what happens.