Curmudgeon

Someone has bothered to map the winter distribution of robins. It is closely tied to snow depth. I don't recall the exact amount but somewherein the range of 5" gets them to clear out. A Google search would turn up the details, I'm sure.

Yes, some weird genes in there. Dog, Amish, who knows?

Flying squirrels are really cute, AS LONG AS they stay where they belong!

Coonhunter - I cannot know for certain. I wasn't there. I just tend to use Occam's Razor (the most likely explanation). Hatch year-first winter bald eagles will not have any white visible when they are perched. Here is a shot from last winter of a first winter bald eagle on the post, with a couple of other juveniles below it. The one on the lower left is likely a first winter bird also. You can see the white under its wings because they are opened, but none on its chest. The other bird is a second or third winter bird. These are some current juvenile balds from Otsego County. Here are some more current golden eagle photos from this year. These 2 are adults. This is a nice, clean, first winter golden, also in Delaware County. We haven't photographed a golden in Otsego yet. One of my tracked bird left the southern Adirondacks 2 days ago. She was in Schoharie County - between Cobleskill and Seward - yesterday morning. For those of you who like the looks of those coyotes, or for anyone new to the forum, this is a photo from last year of the world's ugliest coyote.

Pygmy, I saw my first roughie last week. There have been short-eared in southern Montgomery county since November. They are still around.

Coonhunter - I love your enthusiasm but I wonder if it wasn't a large bald eagle. The size range of each species is almost exactly the same. I've done raptor research for over 25 years and taught a number of workshops on raptor ID. Size is not something I can use to help separate eagle species.There are big and small eagles of each species. The main reason I question the ID is the location. You would not ordinarily see a golden eagle sitting by a river. That is where you expect to find a bald eagle. Golden eagles in our area - and we are quite close - tend to stay at high elevations. I've seen one in the Unadilla River valley once. It was flying. A couple of times I've seen them on frozen ice in Delaware County, always on a dead deer and with bald eagles around. For more information on goldens - http://wequarran.com/golden-eagle.pdf Here are some recent coyote photos from Delaware County, including 2 dancing.

No. It there the one day. Unless the dog showed up where the dog warden could catch it, it probably did not end well.

Golden Eagle research began immediately after deer season ended upstate. Things usually start out slow. This season is no different. The extreme cold probably isn't helping. Bait is hard as rocks. Eagles are few. The ravens also seemed to disburse once rifle season started. Ravens attract more ravens. Eagles see the groups of ravens and associate them with food. It's a virtuous circle. Here are a few shots from the first 10 days. I expect things to pick up as more birds find the bait, and once temps return to normal. Adult Golden Eagle in Delaware County Adult Bald Eagle in Otsego County 5 Bald Eagles and 2 ravens in Otsego County. The 2 close eagles are juveniles.

Cameras all get switched from targeting deer to targeting scavengers as soon as rifle season starts. I like to use rechargeable nimh batteries but they don't hold up in the cold. I switch to lithium when the temperature drops.

I was thinking of pulling the camera off the bone yard. However, when I got there, there was over 1000 new photos. Many of them are crows and woodpeckers but there are some good fisher photos. This coyote - which looks young, and small compared to the deer carcasses - looks like it got wet. It was around this AM while it was still below zero. It doesn't seem to be drying out very quickly. I was

My granddaughters and I were petting some of them the last time we went to the fun park near their home.

All the best to you. Keep those great photos coming.

Anything that would open more private land to hunting would be good overall. I don't know if a tax break is feasible because other local taxpayers end up picking up the difference, in effect subsidizing land for hunting. Any attempt to change things needs to consider why private land is off limits. In my experience, 2 things cause landowners to prohibit hunting: they oppose hunting - in which case it's a moot point; or, they have experienced bad behavior by hunters. In my neighborhood it's about 50 - 50. As a hunter, I've witnessed more bad behavior than I care to recall. There are a lot of hunters I wouldn't want near me, my house or my livestock.

The dog was only here one day.

I read Doc's post and am left with nothing but questions and scepticism. Having spent much of my adult life observing and studying wild predators, I have never even heard of an adult, wild predator expending any significant amount of energy pursuing prey without the goal of obtaining a meal. Young chase things yes. Adults? Dogs chase deer and don't eat what they kill, but coyotes? Doc is the only person I have ever heard make such a claim. I once watched a family group of coyotes stalk a group of pronghorn with young. As soon as one of the pronghorn noticed a coyote, the hunt ended. The coyotes trotted away. No wasted energy by anyone. Of the dozen or so adult deer kills - by coyotes - that I have found, every one was at a time with deep crusted snow. Those deer weren't run, at least not more than a few feet. I am highly sceptical of Doc's claim.

I believe coyote numbers have increased since the 70s. Without doing a bunch of research right now, I cannot give you any facts. My experiences are just as subjective as any other's. I encountered my first coyotes in the late 70s, or very early 80s, when I was living in Cortland County. I was spending a huge amount of time deer hunting with bow and shotgun in the mid and late 70s. I never saw one while hunting during that period. Now, I see coyotes casually every year, usually while driving. Occasionally while hunting. Often in some wide open wetland habitat near our place in the Adirondacks. The question for me is not whether or not coyote numbers and range have increased. The question is, what does it mean for the ecosystem? What does it mean for populations of our native species - especially for the plants that form the foundation of the food chain? I see NO control of the deer population. In fact, there were many fewer deer here in the years when I rarely encountered coyotes than there are now. Are there fewer rabbits? Not here. This was a dairy farm. It has been a Christmas tree farm since the early 80s, with many plantations now too big for harvest. Old hay fields are now mixed, young forests. We are loaded with rabbits and squirrels. Turkeys are plentiful but numbers do seem lower that a decade ago. Grouse can be found any day you want to look for them but there are not a lot. They are the only game species that I see much fewer of now. I also don't have a bird dog now. Coyotes eat some game but this tiny little spot of mine has great habitat for some species. If the coyotes are affecting game, I'm hoping it results in less rabbits damage, and fewer squirrels in my grafted nut trees. I also hope they are getting some of the woodchucks. With every change (habitat, predator distribution) some species will be winners, others losers. With the habitat change on my property, new species have made it their home. Others have disappeared - those that thrived in grasslands. This is a good point. Coyotes and fishers are adapting to human settlements and thus the suburban prey base is now available to them. We have subdivided and built in so much natural habitat, we have a huge impact. Any species that can adapt to successfully living near people will be successful. We are seeing a bunch of formerly shy bird species moving into towns and villages - ravens, merlins and pileated woodpeckers come immediately to mind. This bodes well for their success as a species.

Yesterday we got a dusting of lake effect. There is beautiful tracking snow this morning. Fisher tracks are everywhere. This includes 2 sets side by side - one large, one medium. I don't know if these animals were together. Breeding season is probably a little ways away. Only one of them was on the carcasses last night. Other that the fisher, crows and a red-tailed hawk have been picking at the remains. My people have started setting up eagle research sites now that deer hunting is over. I cannot set up my site until I am done with Christmas trees. I should have some photos next week. Last week customers were finding a porcupine in the trees. This past weekend it was a dead gut-shot deer. Scavengers had been on it but had only eaten part of a haunch and shoulder. They hadn't gotten into the lead-contaminated guts. I'm taking that one to the DOT pit. It will not be used as eagle bait. Here's one of the fisher shots from early this morning.

Your post started out with an intelligent question, then proceeded into an admission of complete ignorance (red text) about huge habitat and land use changes, and serious ( andreal) invasive species problems that occurred over the past 40 years, and how those changes affected all levels of the food chain. The "only major variation" you are aware of is coyotes. Consider: The forest of the Forest Preserve are 40 years older. How you feel about how that is besides the point. 70 year old forests are now 110 year old forests. The changes are not as dramatic as the previous 40 years but they are significant. Thousands of farms - especially dairy farms - have gone out of business resulting in dramatically different land use. Many of those farms have been subdivided, resulting in access issues, but from a habitat perspecitive more important is the habitat fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation is good for mesopredators. Abandoned farms have grown into brush then second growth forest. NYSDEC has the Young Forest Initiative for the purpose of creating/maintaining game habitat. They claim other benefits but that is just PR. Where farms are still viable, farming practices have changed radically. No one waits until July to cut hay like they did in the 70s. It's May now. Wonder where all the naturally reproducing pheasants have gone? You don't have to look too hard to figure that out. They met the same fate as meadowlark and bobolink nests. If we are going to include waterfowl in the "game" discussion, there are huge numbers of sedentary Canada Geese. They are nesting all over the state. There were almost none nesting here in the 70s. How did coyotes impact that, except to eat a few. Do you consider them game? Continuing with waterfowl, the ecology of most large bodies of water are in chaos due to invasive plants, fish and invertebrates. The only waterfowl that benefit are those that eat zebra mussels. Deer populations are excessively large in most of the state outside the Adirondacks. How do you reconcile this? Invasives have changed the composition of forests, and ruined many miles of river banks. The only grasses growing in Harriman Park are invasive grasses, because the deer kill everything else. The same is true of the park's understory, dominated by barberry. It's a vicous cycle. Too many deer eating native plants that native species need while encouraging invasives that other species cannot not use well. There are all kinds of changes in the populations and distribution of species in the state since the 70s. Is the crash in northern harriers due to coyotes? What about the crash in Grasshopper sparrow numbers? Have hellbenders disappeared due to coyotes? Why have ravens, mourning doves and turkey vultures expanded their range to cover most of the state? Their range in the 70s was a fraction of what it is now. Coyotes? No. Huge changes have taken place and all you can see is coyotes. Calling coyotes invasive is misleading. The term is subjective. However, invasive does not equal introduced. A species that naturally expands its range is not invasive. Otherwise, mourning doves and red-bellied woodpeckers would be considered invasive species in Otsego County. Coyotes are filling a vacant niche. Something that is truly invasive is out-competing a native species for an already filled niche.

Anyone want to buy a lamb next fall? I'll let you shoot it inside a low fence. I'll charge the same for you to shoot it as I would for any grass fed lamb delivered to the slaughter house.

If you are trying to drill through steel that has sheared, even though it is low carbon, work hardening from the shearing can make it harder than the drill bit. Your bits aren't at fault.

My neighbors had a Hereford brood cow shot 2 years ago. Now, that is another 300 acres where no hunting is allowed.

Sure, as long as they don't harm people it's fine. Let them eat cats.

Doc - I can only assume that you choose to remain willfully ignorant. Over and over, discussions have gone on here about the science. It shows that coyotes to do not require thinning. Thinning only results increased coyote reproduction. It is an evolutionary response to being wolf prey. Stable coyote populations have older mating pairs with larger territories. They suppress reproduction by younger animals who cannot establish territories because of the dominant older animals. Kill one or both of the pair defending that territory and you get fractured territories with multiple, younger breeding pairs. Those coyotes are out there - not breeding - waiting for you and your cohorts to kill the alphas. Kill all you want. You only get more. For some reason, killing coyotes also results in larger litters of pups, though I don't know why. You talk about eliminating habitat. We haven't eliminated coyote habitat at all. We have create a whole new place for them, including urban areas, by removing wolves from the east. As far as the subjective arguments that there are fewer turkeys, let us return to the mesopredator issue - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopredator_release_hypothesis . I accept that foxes, skunks, raccoons and possums destroy more turkey nests than coyotes kill turkeys. Coyotes limit the populations of several of those species. When we discuss fewer turkeys - and this is both real and subjective - correlation does not imply causation. Turkey declines - after a exponential rise following reintroduction - were predictable. This is a stabilization of the population. The same thing happens with most invasive species. You can blame whatever you want. That does not make it true. As far as fewer rabbits. Fooey! Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits. Rabbits up to here. I have the habitat, and more rabbits than I want. If you want more small game, do habitat improvement. Don't go looking for scapegoats.

And, 5 times a year we have the opportunity to educate the new young hunters on the forum who get bad information from the He-Man Coyote Haters Club. Visceral hatred of a predator, just because it is a competitor is a demonstration of ecological illiteracy. I like coyotes but have no problem dealing with problem animals. These coyote debates are never about them. However, every once in a while a problem coyote makes the news and the fear-mongers start up again. The rabid animal a few months ago wasn't even a data point. It was an aberration. Yet it started another coyote hate thread. Read the web page I posted early in the thread on coyotes in Chicago. The re are a lot of them and they have not hurt anyone. The reports of coyotes hurting people turned out to be dogs. That is a problem. For every coyote incident in North America, how many tens of thousands of dog bites occur? Where are the dog haters in these discussions? As has been repeated over and over, killing wild coyotes because you think you are benefiting wildlife is foolish. It doesn't result in more deer, more turkeys, or fewer coyotes. It only satisfies a primal wolf hatred - something we should have left behind with our pastoral existence in Europe.

PETA must love that they eat pet cats.