Newsletters

October 2015 - Muskrat, Aster

WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES !
OCTOBER, 2015

“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”

-Chris Maser

 

 

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

 

Environmental Items of Interest – From our members and friends

Industrial logging. Southern forests shipped to Europe. http://www.dogwoodalliance.org/campaigns/bioenergy/organize-your-community/ 

 

Natural Resources Defense Council on wood pellets/biomass burning.

http://www.nrdc.org/land/files/bioenergy-modelling-IB.pdf

 

Climate change that Exxon knew about. http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2015/0917/Exxon-knew-about-climate-change-decades-ago-spent-30M-to-discredit-it 

 

EPA News Release – Dartmouth's Re-Solve Superfund Site on the Copicut River.

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/CDB070C87EF06F5E85257EC70071DC46

 

People's Climate Movement. 

http://peoplesclimate.org/?mc_cid=a0347587c9&mc_eid=771ca1c9d1

 

Good news from CLF.

http://www.clf.org/newsroom/clf-fights-natural-gas-pipeline/

 

Ecological Landscape Alliance Events.

http://www.ecolandscaping.org/events/

 

Climate Change Alaska.

http://www.juancole.com/2015/09/extreme-climate-alaska.html

President Obama on Climate Change.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?327860-1/president-obama-remarks-climate-change

 

 

BIORESERVE FAUNA OF THE MONTH – Muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) 

 Photo – D. Gordon E. Robertson (Creative Commons 3.0)

 

Muskrats are medium-sized rodents that get their common name from the musky-sweet odor from scent glands that they use to mark their territory and from their naked rat-like tail. Muskrats are closely related to voles, not rats.

Novice wildlife watchers often mistake muskrats for beavers. Beavers are huge, often weighing 50 pounds or more. Muskrats weigh 1 to 5 pounds and may reach 2 feet in total length.

Muskrats are covered in thick, water-repellant fur. The undercoat is gray in color, outer-coat a rich dark chestnut-brown topped with darker guard hairs. Muskrat belly fur is silver-gray. Tail is bare, black in color and vertically compressed. Their hind feet are webbed, their front feet are not and are used for grasping, holding food and for digging burrows. They use their hind feet and tail in swimming.

Muskrats are found in most fresh and brackish water environments across the United States and Canada, except for Florida and the arid Southwest. Introduced to western Europe and parts of Asia and South America, in the early 20^th century as a fur resource, muskrats are now considered a nuisance in those areas since they multiply rapidly, burrow into dikes and earthen dams, and get into crop fields  causing agricultural damage.

Like their larger relative the beaver, muskrats build dome-shaped lodges. Instead of using sticks and mud, like beavers do, muskrats build their lodges out of reeds, cattails and other vegetation collected from the bottom of the pond, mixed with mud. Once they have a large enough pile of vegetation the muskrats burrow in from underwater and hollow out living quarters in the interior. They create a “plunge hole” exit next to the entrance. When winter comes the outer walls of the lodge freeze solid into a concrete-like mass impossible for predators to tear apart. The thickness of the lodge walls also insulates from the outside cold keeping the resident muskrats warm and cozy. Muskrats that live in areas where the water is too deep and the surroundings not conducive to lodge building construct bank dens also with an underwater entrance and exit.                                                                                                                                                                                    

Muskrats do not hibernate. They are active, day and night, in all seasons. In winter they patrol their territory swimming about under the ice and gathering roots, shoots and other food items which they take home to eat in their dry and warm lodge. Muskrats can stay submerged for up to 15 minutes before having to come up for air.

When feeding in open marshes muskrats usually eat on a raised feeding platform or push-up they make from neighboring vegetation piled high enough overhead to shield them from view. Cattails are one of the muskrats favorite foods. The also eat arrowhead tubers, water lilies, reeds, sedges, wild rice and will raid corn and other crop fields located adjacent to wetlands. Although mainly herbivorous, muskrats will also eat freshwater clams, crayfish, aquatic insects and small fish if available.

Like cottontail rabbits on land, muskrats are an important prey species for many predators that prowl wetlands. Mink are at the top of the list of muskrat predators. Others that enjoy dining on muskrat include foxes, coyotes, otters, hawks, eagles, owls and snapping turtles. Young muskrats are also preyed on by largemouth bass and northern water snakes. 

Also like rabbits, muskrats are very fecund. In late winter/early spring males will leave their home territory seeking receptive females ready to mate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBYV_7a0FQs

This often brings a wandering male into contact with other males searching for females and violent fights often break out sometimes resulting in the death of one or more combatants.

In our neck of the woods females usually have 2 litters a year of 3 to 8 kits. The young mature by winter and all usually remain together until spring.

Muskrats are a valuable fur resource. Their fur is very soft and warm. Although not many Americans wear muskrat coats and hats anymore they are still popular in Canada, Eastern Europe and Russia.  

Muskrat meat, often sold as “marsh rabbit”, is popular and served in restaurants in various muskrat-rich areas such as Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, Louisiana, etc. ...places where muskrats abound. 

If you want to dine on muskrat in New England you'll have to prepare your own. Here's a start:http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/muskratlovely/recipes.html#bop

                                               

Muskrat lodges. 

Photo – Cephos (Creative Commons 3.0)

 

BIORESERVE FLORA OF THE MONTH - New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)

 

 

This is one of the showiest wildflowers in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve (SMB). It screams, “Summer is ending ...Autumn is near!”

 

The New England aster is large, has blue to blue-purple petals with bright yellow florets at the center ...and is beautiful! This aster is a perennial with hairy, smooth-edged, lance-shaped, alternate leaves. This aster grows from thick, fibrous roots which spread out from the parent plant sprouting new shoots. It also spreads via achenes (small one-seeded fruits) that appear after the flowers are pollinated and when mature are distributed by the wind.

 

New England aster grows in full sun in meadows, old fields, openings in the forest and along trails, roadsides and ditch edges.

 

The New England aster is native to North America east of the Rocky Mountains.  There are many domesticated hybrids, varieties and cultivars of this aster growing in gardens around the world. Some escape cultivation surprising those who know their flowers and find them blooming in vacant lots and other open space areas in cities and suburbs.

 

New England asters are visited by many butterfly species as well as honey bees, bumblebees, carpenter bees and leaf-cutting bees. Our attractive fall woolly bear caterpillar feeds on the foliage of this plant as do over a dozen other species of moth and butterfly caterpillars.

 

Mammalian herbivores mostly avoid this plant possibly because of the hairy leaves and stems. Cottontail rabbits will nibble on new growth in the spring. Sparrows, juncos and other small birds eat the seeds. Various Indian tribes boiled the roots alone or with other herbs to make remedies to treat a wide range of conditions and diseases. We, on a late summer walk, just like to see the flowers.

 

OCTOBER – First full fall month!

What a colorful month. Lots of warm colors for those cool and windy October days. Orange pumpkins; red cranberries floating on blue water; red apples among yellow-green leaves; blue jays calling from red maples and yellow birch; black and orange woolly bears crawling about the countryside predicting the severity of the coming winter and looking for a quiet place to hibernate; orange and black monarch butterflies leaving for Mexico; multi-colored Indian corn and gourds; yellow goldenrod; chestnut chestnuts and ...every color in the spectrum in the leaves falling from deciduous trees and shrubs between October 14 and the 24, depending on the weather, in our neck of the woods here in southeastern New England.

 

You don't want to miss it. Get outdoors. Enjoy a New England October. It only happens once a year.

 

Click here for our calendar.

 

"O suns and skies and clouds of June,

And flowers of June together,

Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather."

- Helen Hunt Jackson

 

 

<Back