The Mink and the Fish

About 7:45 Sunday morning before heading to the West Buttermilk beach, I spotted the flash of a brown weaselly animal out of the laundry room window. I yelled for Jamie to quickly look out the bathroom to see what it was. She said it was carrying something and that it was headed back toward the hanging log bird feeder that has had a pine marten in it in past years. I caught up with it as it was going along by the kitchen window and around to the front of the house. Mink!

This picture was taken out the front door glass. Jack and Jesse got a great view. The fish was nearly the same size as the mink and was still alive flopping around. Magpies were a mobbing racket. Seemed like the mink was looking for a place to stash the fish. Under the house? He dug around a little but soon grabbed the fish and escaped the magpies under the fence, likely finding a good spot in the ACES woodpile. It was a nice start to a beautiful 40 degree sunny day. I guess the little beaver backwater created in the restored channel (1996) next to Peggy's Island holds fish now and makes for good mink habitat. Thanks Beav! Another piece to this story is the Jenny Adair constructed wetland (2007) which has helped the water quality on the Roaring Fork and increased the acreage of wildlife habitat around Hallam Lake. Mountain Lion, Elk, and Mink all right here during the past month.

Winter Birds: Robins and Grosbeaks

While some animals hibernate all winter, and some migrate to warmer places, others are active and thriving. We have recently seen pine grosbeaks flying around the mountain ash trees at Hallam Lake! This large and rare member of the finch family is eating the fruit off the ash trees and serviceberries right along the short driveway into ACES. Thankfully Lindsay Fortier captured these birds with her camera before they flew away.

The winter habitat of the pine grosbeak is determined by the availability of food. With a limited amount of fruiting trees the grosbeaks are known to remain on a single tree for many days until all of the berries are gone. Their mild temperament and slow-moving, seemingly lazy, behavior caused the grosbeak to get the nickname, 'mope.'

Many people presume that our local Colorado robins migrate to a warmer climate for the cold winter. And they would be correct... for the most part. Animals that are active in our winter world are in the constant business of trying to find energy; we all need food to generate heat to keep ourselves alive. While many robins do migrate away from Aspen, some also take the energy budget challenge and stay. The amount of non-migratory robins depends on the amount of available food in a particular year. This year seems to have a plentiful amount of berries. Thus, we are seeing many robins that have decided to stay the cold winter.

Puzzling Prickly Prints

          Atop Aspen Mountain I was waiting for guests to join me on a tour. One o’clock passed and no one arrived except a fellow Naturalist, Robin. Instead of taking Robin on a tour that she also leads, we decided to just walk the trail and enjoy the day.  As we walked away from the hustle and bustle of the ski hill we started through the forest. It had just snowed the day before, so the snow was gleaming and untouched. As we walked up a nice hill tracks crossed our paths, I hadn’t seen anything like them before. And with a few seconds of thoughts, I yelled out in excitement, “porcupine tracks, porcupine tracks”! These are probably the coolest tracks I have seen yet. I like to think of a porcupine track like a broom, they waddle along, leaning from one side to the other, dragging their feet and quills as they sweep across the snow. We were both so excited we decided we had to find the prickly fellow. 

            At first we thought he couldn’t have gone far, maybe just in the tree a few yards away, but it turns out our prickly friend must have been on a mission of his own. We followed his tracks across the snowmobile tracks of Richmond Ridge Road and up a mighty steep, but small, hill. He traveled across our snowshoe trail, once again, and down the hill towards Little Annies Road. We tracked him for quite a ways but then decided he was heading all the way down the hill, a trek we were not equipped for. So after cutting through the fresh snow, and chasing down our unseen porcupine we had to abandon our mission and accept that he was somewhere in the trees, eating away at the bark of a spruce tree. But I have hope that I will run into, hopefully not literally, one soon. One has been spotted on Elk Camp on Snowmass Mountain, so hopefully I will get to see an active prickly porcupine before the winter is over!