Bobcat sighting

ORRINGTON – A recent visitor to the Fields Pond Audubon Center went walking near Fields Pond on a rainy day. His reward for being the only person out in the rain was to see a bobcat! It was standing on the ice of the pond, lapping water from an opening in the ice.

After slaking its thirst, the bobcat turned around and bounded toward Audubon’s island in the lake, and disappeared into the woods there. Bobcat tracks have been seen near the center building and also on the lake.

Bobcats have also been seen crossing the road at night, but this is the first time somebody has reported a sighting in the Audubon area in broad daylight. What a treat, to see an animal that is usually so secretive.

Everybody’s somebody’s lunch

In the shallow snow this week, many mouse tracks and tunnels are evident in the fields at Fields Pond. There is much survival value for a deer mouse or a meadow mouse, a.k.a. meadow vole, to stay under the snow or grass. They try to stay where it’s safe, but their predators know… and wait, and watch, listen, and sniff. Sometimes the predators are successful, and sometimes they go hungry, and the tracks tell the story.

At Fields Pond Audubon Center, a naturalist has often been quoted: “Mice are nature’s twinkies.” And the author of a children’s book is often quoted: “Everybody’s Somebody’s Lunch.”

An owl pounces

With two inches of snow on recently mowed fields, we saw many successful forays of meadow voles from one tussock of grass to another, or from one tunnel in the snow to another. We also saw one large tail print, with a blurry footprint, of an owl in the snow. By the breadth of the tailprint, and size of the foot, we inferred that a Great Horned Owl pounced on a mouse.

There was no indication (such as blood or fur) that it had caught the mouse. Perhaps the mouse got away, or perhaps the owl flew away with the mouse in its talons. Tracks don’t always tell all!

But, it was fun to imagine the owl, hearing the mouse under the snow and trying to pounce in the exact spot. Their asymmetrical ear openings, of different size and shape, higher on one side of the head than the other, enable them to triangulate and locate the origin of the tiniest noise. (Owl “ear tufts” do not serve a hearing function, but make them less visible against a tree trunk.)

Foxes and coyotes pounce, too

This week, we saw many tracks of foxes and coyotes trotting back and forth across our fields. The action takes place at night, as these predators watch and listen for mice and voles, “nature’s twinkies.” When they hear a mouse under the snow, they make a prodigious leap and pin a mouse under their front paws. Crunch, gobble! These stories are written in the snow for us to read by daylight – when the fox is successful, an individual mouse’s tale ends in blood and fur, but nature’s web lives on and on, in the fox, the soil, the fields and forests.

Send sightings, comments, or questions to fieldspond@maineaudubon.org