Every year, like clockwork, a flock of turkeys appears around the cabin. This year I counted 10 of them, as they sauntered between my cabin and my neighbors’, making soft clucking noises. I’m happy to welcome them back, but where have they been all summer and, why do they only come down to the valley bottom in fall?
In the first years I bought the cabin, I was satisfied to admire all the wildlife and nature around me—the chipmunks, ground squirrels and birds, plus the occasional deer, elk, bobcat and bear—without wondering about their lives. But gradually, with a ring-side view of nature, I started observing patterns and wanted to know more.
After years of being here, I noticed the ground squirrels go into hibernation in September while the chipmunks (left) wait another month before hunkering down for the winter. Yet, I just noticed a chipmunk this week. Why was it delaying its winter rest? I found a partial answer when I read that adult chipmunks hibernate first, followed by the young ones—those born last spring. Which raises new questions: why do the younger ones hang around longer? I can only presume it’s to fatten up as much as possible for the winter. But if their parents have already gone to sleep, how do the young ones know where to burrow down for the winter? And why do the chipmunks spend longer above ground than the ground squirrels?
Similarly, I read that the younger hummingbirds hang around our forests longer than the parents before migrating south. But how do they know the route, if their parents aren’t showing them the way? It boggles my mind to think that somewhere imprinted in their tiny brain is a pathway to Mexico they’ve never taken before.
Meanwhile, the chickarees—the frenetic gray squirrels—don’t hibernate at all. Why don’t they join their rodent cousins in sleeping away the winter? For one thing, they can escape the snow and predators by living high up in the trees.
Every spring, the house wrens (right) arrive, filling the forest with their lilting songs, and build a nest that I observe all summer. Shortly after their young ones fledge, the birds disappear, sometime in late August. Where are they spending their winters? According to a Cornell Lab map, they head to the southern parts of the U.S. and Mexico, so now I can imagine them enjoying the warmer weather.
Why do some birds migrate and others stay here all winter long? Can the Steller’s jays, the juncos and chickadees withstand the cold better than the wrens and swallows who leave for warmer climes? My best guess is that the year-long residents’ food source is the nuts and seeds, while the migrating birds depend on insects that die with the cold.
The moose also hang out all winter in Meeker Park, as long as their main food source—the willow bushes—are plentiful. If not, they gnaw at the soft aspen bark. Some questions I have no answers for. Why are there so few deer and elk when neighboring Estes Park is overrun with the elk? Why are there no raccoons here?
Still, the creature that creates the most wonderment for me is the pack rat that lives in my garage/shed where I store my firewood. Since I haven’t needed firewood this summer, I’ve not been paying close attention to the disturbances in the garage. But now that cold weather is here, I went looking for a missing hand saw to cut logs, wondering if the pack rat had made off with it. As I searched the darkest recesses of the garage, I found that the creature had set pine boughs on the floor next to a small structure it had built of foot-long sticks, including two green paint can stirrers—adding a little color to what could have been a drab assemblage. On the other side of the garage, beneath the stairs, it had woven a nest of pink insulation that likely came from underneath the cabin. On the stairs was another sculpture of sticks, which appeared to be placed so as to block access to the upstairs, possibly where the real nest is.
But the most amazing piece was on the wall where I hang paintbrushes and tools. On one of the nails the pack rat had hung an aspen branch that still had green leaves on (right). Amazing because a branch on the wall serves no useful purpose for this animal, unlike the nests and possible barricades on the floor.
This forces me to wonder if an animal, with a brain not much larger than a walnut, could create something purely decorative, with no purpose but to put a little beauty on a utilitarian wall. And maybe to delight the human next door.
It boggles my mind and makes me wonder what else I don’t know about the animal world. There’s still much to be discovered.