by jhwildlife | Sep 25, 2018 | Blog
By Frances Clark – Lead Ambassador, Nature Mapping Jackson Hole
What to look for in October? – Almost everything!
October is a critical month of movement for wildlife as cold settles in, grasses dry, insects die, and berries and seeds are there for the picking.
We encourage Nature Mappers to look for “last of the year” (LOY) sightings of several species that either winter below ground or migrate out of the valley. For instance, keep an eye out for chipmunks—least chipmunks are mostly in the sagebrush running with their long tails stiffly upright, and yellow-pine chipmunks, with slightly wider, shorter tails, are more likely seen in forests. Both species cache food for winter, perhaps rousing from hibernation or a torpor to benefit from these treasures mid-winter. A few osprey were lingering a few days ago as the younger ones leave after their parents. Will you spot the last? Also, we have had LOY records for Bank and Rough-winged Swallows, Wilson’s Warbler, Double-crested Cormorant, and Clark’s Grebe for October in 2011. Kestrels will disappear along with their insect prey–crickets, as will Mountain Bluebirds. Will you take the last record for the year?
Many other birds are moving through: the last of the Sandhill Cranes (listen, then look high!), hawks, many ducks, mixed flocks of songbirds as well as more obvious flocks of blackbirds, starlings, and crows. Do your best. Other critters are shifting around the valley as the weather cools and grasses wither. Pronghorn start making their way towards the Gros Ventre and eventually down to Pinedale along the “Path of the Pronghorn.” Bison move around and away from the bison hunt. Elk are bugling and jousting (territorial and reproductive behaviors), and Bighorn Sheep may show up near Miller Butte in the National Elk Refuge. Watch out for moose now because they are in full rut. Juveniles look on as mom and strange bulls are dashing about in a craze. Bears are in hyperphagia, eating all they can before winter. Eight black bears were seen one morning along Moose-Wilson Road last week—do you know why? Think berries.
Birds that are more visible at lower elevations include Gray and Stellar’s Jays. Goshawks also come lower—checking out bird feeders for small birds. Cedar Waxwings come in for berries.
In short, October is a great month for Nature Mapping. Get out and enjoy the show while giving back to the wildlife we all care for.
by jhwildlife | Sep 25, 2018 | Blog
By Debra Patla – Research Associate, Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative
If you see or hear an amphibian this month, wish it “Good Night and Good Luck!” Amphibians (frogs, toads, and salamanders) mostly vanish from our view in September and are not seen again until April or May. Where do they go? How do these small, fur-less animals not only survive Jackson Hole winters, but also manage to do so for long lives of up to 15 years or more?
As ectotherms (“cold-blooded” vertebrates), amphibians have the advantage of being able to go for months without any food at all. The popular idea that they just go down into the mud to sleep for the winter does not actually pertain to any of our locals. Each species here has its own special adaptations, and these are so successful that we see some populations persisting over decades, showing up to breed in the same wetlands every spring. The basic recipe is being able to get to the right places in late summer/fall, which typically means dispersing or migrating. This crucial element of their lives makes amphibians very vulnerable to development, landscape alteration, and roads, even if wetlands are protected.
Jackson Hole has four species of native amphibians. Here are their winter-survival recipes:
Boreal Chorus Frog: Find a good dry place and chill!
Boreal Chorus Frogs over-winter terrestrially (not in water) — at or near the soil surface, such as under rocks and logs, in leaf litter and loose soil under snow, among tree roots, and in animal burrows. Some of these frogs may even find a place in your basement, house foundation, or out-building, if they have survived the trip to your yard from the pond where they metamorphosed from tadpoles or mated as adults.
The miracle ingredient of their strategy is that chorus frogs can tolerate freezing. Only a few species of amphibians in North America can do this. Physiological adaptations allow them to stop breathing, heartbeat, and blood flow, while the water outside their cells and vital organs freezes. Then they thaw out and make the trek to a wetland where you will again hear their amazing concerts in the spring.
By the way, you may hear this species in October: they sometimes make a small trill in fall during the daytime, usually from dry places within a few hundred yards of a pond. This sound is much shorter and softer than their breeding call and is a bit like the softest clacking call of a Clark’s Nutcracker (but on the ground). No one seems to know why they do this!
Columbia Spotted Frog: Find water that does not freeze, with oxygen please!
Columbia Spotted Frogs spend the winter in spring-fed streams, ponds or lakes with springs or upwelling water, submerged bank chambers at the edges of water bodies, and in underground springs. Do they sleep all winter? No, studies indicate they often move around in their winter areas to find more oxygen or warmer water. Spotted frogs often aggregate at winter sites, a kind of party we can only try to imagine! But the tendency to gather at crucially important, hard (for us)-to-recognize sites threatens our ability to conserve local population of this species.
Western Toad: Find a cozy underground nook!
Western Toads exhibit yet another winter strategy: they cannot tolerate freezing, but they do not over-winter in water like spotted frogs. Toads seek out rodent burrows, squirrel middens, crevices or chambers underground, decayed root tunnels of large trees, or abandoned beaver lodges. What’s important is to get away from the frost zone. Toads may migrate long distances (e.g., over 1 mile) to reach their over-winter sites, and they spend the winter communally, suggesting that suitable sites are quite rare in the landscape. These behaviors pose a big challenge to successful conservation of local populations.
Western Tiger Salamander: Just go deeper!
Adult Western Tiger Salamanders spend most of their lives underground even in summer in rodent burrows (such as those made by pocket gophers) or under logs or rocks. They can also dig their own burrows in soft soil. Winter dictates that they get away from the frost zone and the danger of freezing by going deeper down in the underground. Their behavior is hard for modern researchers to investigate because they do not carry radio transmitters well on their long slender bodies, and implanted transmitters do not work underground.
Tiger salamanders are Jackson Hole’s ‘Trickster’– they have a knack of showing up and surprising people in yards, cellars, garages, dog water bowls, under buckets and porches, window wells, irrigation ditches, fish hatchery runways — good grief, what’s next? There are quite a few observations of large numbers of salamanders crossing roads, usually at night, in the rain. This again shows how vulnerable amphibians are to habitat fragmentation and increasing traffic in the face of their vital need to find safe winter places.
Boreal Chorus Frogs over-winter out of the water near the ground surface. Photo Credit: Jaime Hazard.
Deb Patla is a herpetologist who lives near Moran in Buffalo Valley. She has conducted long-standing amphibian surveys in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks as well as the National Elk Refuge. She is also a Nature Mapper and vets our amphibian and snake observations. Please keep on mapping those creeping, leaping, and slithering creatures!
by jhwildlife | Sep 12, 2018 | Blog
Photo: Henry Holdsworth, Wild by Nature Gallery
By Kyle Kissock, Communications Manager
As the town of Jackson welcomes the return of yellowing cottonwoods and frosty mornings, we also enter another season of animals on the move. With the chance for large wildlife encounters improving daily, fall’s imminence is an opportunity for us to reflect on how our actions can continue to foster a wildlife-friendly landscape. What better place to start than reminder to be “Bear Wise?”
Bear Wise Wyoming (and Bear Wise Jackson Hole) are collaborative educational campaigns that offer solutions to avoiding human-bear conflict. Both grizzly and black bears enter hyperphagia in the fall, packing on calories in preparation for hibernation. Not only does this mean that bears will be foraging at lower elevations closer to human habitation, but increases the potential for risk-taking behavior in bears, as already opportunistic species morphs into an especially gluttonous eating machines. As human residents of bear country, simple ways we can do our part include:
- Properly storing garbage either in bear-resistant cans or inside a building until morning pickup.
- Storing odorous, recyclable containers indoors.
- Cleaning up unsightly grill detritus and food waste after barbeques and picnics in our yards and amazing public parks.
- Not leaving pet food outside.
- Remember that putting feed out for wildlife violates city ordinance.
- Encouraging our neighbors to do all of the above
Teton County has outlined Bear Conflict Priority Areas for the town of Jackson and strict garbage storage is mandated for certain areas including the West Bank and Cache Creek area. If you are unsure of the Conflict Priority Area where you live, you can access a map on the Teton County website. However, while the probability of a bear encounter might be higher in certain neighborhoods (last year there were 32 verified reports of human-black bear conflict in East Jackson during a two week stretch in October), it is unrealistic to expect bears to limit their fall foraging to politically convenient areas. Furthermore, as grizzlies continue to thrive and expand their ranges to the fringes of this ecosystem, the possibility of grizzly encounters around Jackson remains.
Staying “Bear Wise” this fall mitigates human-bear conflicts and has a byproduct of helping guard against habituation of other smaller scavengers like foxes, ravens and coyotes. Whether it’s a bear or a migrating ungulate that ambles through your neighborhood this shoulder season, we challenge you to be continually intentional in your actions to keep our town creature-friendly, and Jackson a role-model for wildlife-minded communities across the West.
Happy fall wildlife watching!
by jhwildlife | Aug 30, 2018 | Blog
As the summer comes to an end, we have to say goodbye to our seasonal field staff. This group of amazing individuals helped collect data, led the Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) project, banded Mountain Bluebirds, organized volunteers and produced written and visual content to support our core programs. We hope that in the future we are able to get a group of individuals who are as passionate and dedicated as this crew was. We wish them the best as they move forward in their promising careers.
Here’s a bit about where each is going next:
Lead Bird Bander Kate Maley (top left) is headed to the Midwest to band owls at Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Duluth, Minnesota. This long-term research station primarily looks at Northern Saw-whet Owls in hopes of learning about migration and population demographics.
Assistant Bird Bander Max Frankenberry (top right) is headed to Casper, Wyoming to help conduct eagle surveys at wind energy sites, in hopes of lowering mortality rates while promoting compatibility between new energy technology and wildlife. Max will also be helping conduct a bumblebee study with the USGS.
Summer Intern Victoria Hollingsworth (lower right) is headed over the hill to live in Victor, Idaho in hopes of pursuing a job in outdoor and art education. She is looking forward to meeting new people and continuing her passions.
Summer Intern Tyler McIntosh’s (lower left) next stop is the big island of Hawaii, where he will help organize and teach an environmental field science program for undergraduate students. He is excited about the opportunity to continue developing his skills as an educator and passing along his passion for the natural world. He also won’t complain about exploring the Hawaiian reefs and beaches! In the future, Tyler hopes to work on conservation and management issues with non-profits and government agencies in the American West. He seeks to integrate community-engaged decision making with conservation research while providing meaningful educational opportunities.
by jhwildlife | Aug 24, 2018 | Blog
by Max Frankenberry, Assistant Bird Bander
After nine weeks of banding birds this summer, JHWF’s first MAPS season has officially come to an end. Every Wednesday and Friday sunrise, from June 6th to August 3rd, was spent setting up nets, collecting data on the birds we caught, and attaching small aluminum USGS-issued bands to their legs. All in all, this season produced 677 total bird captures, with 453 new birds banded this season.
Bird banding is a highly-effective research method used worldwide for tracking bird movement, survival rates, and reproduction success. Banders are trained in specialized bird handling, safety, and data collection, and can only legally band birds if covered under state and federal permits. Each band number is unique to each individual bird. Banders report both new bands placed on previously unbanned birds, and bands that are on birds that they recapture after already being banded before. Other data like age, sex, weight, and various conditions are also collected and reported, forming the massive database of information that USGS and various ornithological groups manage and analyze.
Lead Bird Bander Kate Maley attempts to age this Red-shafter Flicker (Colaptes auratus) by inspecting flight feather characteristics
Assistant Bird Bander Max Frankenberry measures the wing chord length of a Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) Photo credit: David Hopkins
MAPS stands for Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship. It is a specific banding program begun by the Institute for Bird Populations (IBP), with a goal of better understanding survival rate and nesting success while birds are at their summer breeding grounds. JHWF bands birds following IBP protocol — opening nets at sunrise and closing them six hours later — and submits data to the IBP database. This builds on the years of previous data collected on birds in Jackson Hole from Teton Science Schools (TSS) and Teton Raptor Center (TRC), who helped transition the program to us this year. Our two banding locations, Teton Science Schools’ Kelly campus and Boyle’s Hill on their Jackson campus, have been contributing data without a break in observations for 28 and 16 years respectively. Kelly is one of the longest operating MAPS stations in the country! Long-term, uninterrupted data sets are crucial to understanding trends in bird population shifts. Thanks again to TSS and TRC for making the transitions between organizations so smooth!
The 2018 season ended with 180 recaptures (out of 677 total captures) of previously banded birds, with several of these birds having been banded even before the 2017 season. Much like years before and not surprising to those of us that live in Jackson Hole, our most popular species caught were Yellow Warblers and American Robins (AMROs). In total, 109 new Yellow Warblers (or YEWAs in banding code) had bands placed on their legs this year, many of them young birds born this summer. YEWAs are doing just fine in our valley! American Robins were our second most common bird this year, with 57 new birds banded. While we had constant flows of incoming YEWAs and AMROs, we also had a few particularly exciting individuals as well. By far the most unexpected were a pair of Belted Kingfishers, each caught a week apart from each other! While kingfishers are not uncommon here, they are rarely caught in banding stations, mostly due to their preference for flying much higher than the nets and perching on trees overhanging water.
Male Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon)
Female Belted Kingfishers have a rusty belly band (Megaceryle alcyon)
Belted Kingfishers have detailed white patterns on their flight feathers – we can use these to figure out how old the birds are!
We were excited to say the least. Other species that graced us with their surprising presence were a very vocal Olive-sided Flycatcher and a juvenile Brown Creeper. We also had 40 birds that were captured and released but not banded, including large number of Rufous, Calliope and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds (our banding permit does not allow hummingbird banding – that requires additional specialized training). Overall we captured 45 different species of birds over 9 weeks. This guaranteed that we never had a slow morning at either banding station!
Other wildlife sightings always kept us on our toes throughout the season – early mornings at Kelly and Boyle’s Hill allowed us views of several moose and calves, foxes, a grizzly bear, a family of otters, and even an elusive mountain lion! Sunrise work with birds in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem meant bear spray and our favorite badly-sung show tunes had to always be at the ready.
Olive-sided Flycatcher (Contopus cooperi)
Male Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus)
Juvenile Brown Creeper (Certhia americana)
We want to thank all who have made this program possible. This effort to track birds in our valley really does contribute extremely valuable data to a great continent-wide program. The MAPS data has resulted in many highly regarded publications on the state of bird populations in North America and new ways to manage and preserve them. Thanks for being “for the birds”!
Below is a full list of the species we captured and banded this season. Look them up and try to spot some of them in your own backyard!
- Calliope Hummingbird
- Broad-tailed Hummingbird
- Rufous Hummingbird
- Belted Kingfisher
- Red-naped Sapsucker
- Downy Woodpecker
- Red-shafted Flicker
- Olive-Sided Flycatcher
- Western Wood-Pewee
- Willow Flycatcher
- Dusky Flycatcher
- Warbling Vireo
- Violet-Green Swallow
- Black-Capped Chickadee
- Mountain Chickadee
- Red-breasted Nuthatch
- White-breasted Nuthatch
- Brown Creeper
- House Wren
- Golden-crowned Kinglet
- Ruby-crowned Kinglet
- American Robin
- Swainson’s Thrush
- Hermit Thrush
- Gray Catbird
- Cedar Waxwing
- Orange-crowned Warbler
- Yellow Warbler
- Audubon’s Warbler
- MacGillivray’s Warbler
- Wilson’s Warbler
- Western Tanager
- Black-headed Grosbeak
- Green-tailed Towhee
- Brewer’s Sparrow
- Chipping Sparrow
- Mountain White-Crowned Sparrow
- Fox Sparrow
- Song Sparrow
- Dark-eyed Junco
- Brown-headed Cowbird
- Bullock’s Oriole
- Cassin’s Finch
- Pine Siskin
- American Goldfinch
by jhwildlife | Aug 24, 2018 | Blog
GUEST BLOG: The Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation asked our friends and fellow Nature Mappers, Betty and Chuck Mulcahy to share a bit with us about their current volunteer work at the National Elk Refuge. Betty and Chuck do a lot to educate the public about the wonders of snakes and demystify their wicked reputation. Don’t be afraid, read on and learn about our serpent friends:
“Count the snakes and keep your distance!” a friend warned in an email after we told her our new assignment for biological work on the National Elk Refuge was to survey reptiles, mainly counting the snakes.
Unknown to her, the snakes in Jackson Hole are comprised of three non-venomous species. Because one species, the rubber boa, is nocturnal, we don’t expect to encounter it on our rounds, although our biologist mentioned he had seen one once during the day.
The other two species are the wandering gartersnake and the valley gartersnake. The wandering gartersnake is the more numerous and is unlikely to bite if picked up. Instead, this species prefers to defend itself by exuding a musk in your hand, much like pooping. As we tell school children when we present a reptile program in their classrooms, this defense is very effective due to the pungent odor! Their response is always the same: “Eeeeeew!”
However, locating snakes on 25,000 acres can be tricky – perhaps likened to searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Our long-time mentor in snake locating is a Denver Zoo reptile keeper, as well as rattlesnake researcher, who can find a snake with the ease of a professional.
In the past, we have spotted snakes on top of Miller Butte, thermoregulating across roads, swimming in creeks, and hiding in sidewalk cracks and under steps. Now, scouring the Refuge, we flip rocks, turn logs, lift tarps, and trudge through thick vegetation in our search.
Because snakes have yet to be surveyed on the Refuge, no precedent is set for their documentation. Consequently, we outline our search area on a map and record date and findings in a comment section. Finding nothing is as important to record as our successes, according to our biologist, as is recording any dead serpents.
While the wandering gartersnake can often be found at a distance from water, the valley gartersnake is found more often near water and is believed to have declined in population over the years.
We hope to encounter each of these species!
̶ Betty and Chuck Mulcahy
To keep up-to-date on Betty and Chuck’s survey and other adventures you can follow along via their blog Have Snakes Will Travel: The Unconventional Lives of Volunteer Naturalists.
For more detailed information including photographs on the three snake species found in Teton County, WY visit the following links:
- Northern Rubber Boa – Charina bottae – looks like a fake rubber snake, with its lack of distinctive head or tail or any markings. In Wyoming, it is found only in the mountainous northwestern region.
- Wandering Gartersnake – Thamnophis elegans vagrans – is by far the most common gartersnake in Teton County and ranges across the state. The body background color varies from brown to olive, and the stripes and markings can vary in intensity, but it will not have red.
- The Valley Gartersnake – Thamnophis elegans fitchi – has a very limited range in Wyoming: the very western edge of Teton and Lincoln Counties. It is distinctive from the Wandering Gartersnake by its red accents.
