Coyote Stories II

(Continued from preceding post)

Like many mammals, coyotes like to play with things. The coyotes at the preserve not only liked to play with things but they had a playground in the field right in front of where their tunnel  through the brush opened onto the meadow.  And their playground was strewn with toys.  From somewhere they had, collected a very old plastic container that once held bar and chain oil.  Another favorite was a green soda pop bottle.  They also liked the plastic cap I placed over the shallow pvc well I had installed in one of the basins or ‘pans’  in the heart of the preserve.  I used the well to check the water depth in the shallow basins or pans that wander through the Preserve and the coyotes use the cap as a toy.  If I didn’t put it on securely I was likely to find it almost anywhere in the preserve with the tiny indentations of sharp little coyote teeth all around its perimeter.  (I tried to remember to put it on securely.)   

Another item that seemed to fascinate the coyotes was an amber plastic rain gauge.  I didn’t mind the well cap, after all, just as it was my responsibility to make sure the cap was securely fastened to the well pipe, it was the coyote's responsibility to try to remove the cap.  But the gauge was another matter.  You don't have a bog if you don't have water and you don't understand the bog if you don't understand  how water works in, on, and through the bog.  Consequently, I took weekly precipitation amounts at the bog.   After losing several weeks of data to the coyote's inquisitiveness I placed the rain gauge on a high pole.

The coyote's favorite toy, however, was a plastic yellow duck.  I first discovered this duck nestled among the reed canary grass. It wasn't until the staff began to remove the reed canary grass that the coyotes discovered the plastic duck.  This is not a small toy, nor is it light, so it must have taken some effort to carry it back to the playground and that is where I found it one day among the other toys...the green soda bottle, the black bar and chain oil container, some Styrofoam and the yellow duck, with its head missing.

The coyotes at the preserve were often a highlight of my weekly visits.   Always good for a chuckle and a smile, some times of tolerant frustration, I looked forward to seeing them, catching a glimpse of them as they followed behind me, and hearing them sing.  For some reason the coyotes left the preserve after I’d been there about a year and a half.  It wasn’t long after that I completed my work and moved on. The place just wasn’t the same without the coyotes.

Coyote Stories I

The coyote, Canis latrans has been as much a part of my family life as my brothers and my sister.  I spent my childhood in Southern California during and following the Second World War.  Early in my Middle School years my family relocated to the San Gabriel Valley at the base of the San Sierra Madre Mountains.  Things were much different in the LA Basin at that time.  There were fewer of us and much more open land.  From the back of our bright new post-war home to the base of the mountains were hundreds of acres of orange groves and thousands of acres of oak scrub and brush.  There were dove and quail, and rabbits and raptors.  There were also the coyotes.  I learned to listen for these little wolves and to watch for them along the sides of the dirt roads that, at that time, still crisscrossed the fields and orchards of Southern California.  During high school others things captured my attention, and imagination, and I didn't think so much about the coyotes.   But they were never far away and I would hear the yips and howls of what author Jack Couffer calls the Song of Wild Laughter on my way to an early morning college class or to my job washing dish and bussing tables in a small, local restaurant.   

My work with federal natural resource management agencies brought me East and along with me came the coyotes spreading across land they have once occupied.  From Washington, DC, to Florida, to Georgia, and now to North Carolina, this ubiquitous little wolf has only been a walk at first light, a full moon, or a shadowy glimpse away.  

For several years I served as Steward at Bat Fork Bog Plant Conservation Preserve,  a small native plant preserve almost in the center of Hendersonville, North Carolina.  It did not take me long to realize that coyotes were among my companions at the preserve.  The Preserve is located only a kilometer, possibly a bit more, from downtown Hendersonville and only a few blocks from the main fire station.  The coyotes liked the fire station; they especially like the sound of the sirens as the large red trucks lumber out of their barn-like shelter and roar-off on their missions of mercy.  The coyotes often accompany the sirens with their high-pitched howls.  I remember one of the neighbors living on the high ground to the west of the Preserve asking me if I was afraid of coyotes.  I told him I wasn't and he said "good, cause you sure have a lot of them in there," gesturing toward the boggy lowlands below us. 

(Image courtesy of Google)

(Continued in the next post)

Bog Days II

(Continued from preceding posting)

 Another thing I spent quite a bit of time on at Bat Fork Bog was developing an understanding of how water worked in the Preserve.  This turned out to be a fascinating experience that involved the bog in times of drought and in times of flood Only two places on the Preserve retained water throughout the year.  We dug test ‘wells’ throughout the Preserve to find water during drought but, with the exception of the two locations noted, it was not there or it was down so far as to be useless in increasing habitat for the bunched arrowhead. In fact, water was mostly a feast or famine thing at the Preserve. When it was feast it was, literally, a movable feast because during those time of exceptionally heavy rainfall, water would flow into the bog from the surrounding uplands and adjacent Bat Fork Creek would overflow discharging hundreds of thousands of gallons into the shallow bowl of the Preserve and putting otherwise fairly dry land a meter or two underwater.  We published a preliminary hydrological study of the Preserve in Natural Areas Journal.  

Poison ivy was ubiquitous at the Preserve and I felt like I had that itching irritation going on some part of my body at least half of the time I sloshed around in those wetlands.  On the other hand, the Preserve had delightful surprises.  One of the most enjoyable of these surprises was the family of coyotes that lived in an embankment along one of Preserve boundaries.  These curious, melodic creatures would howl almost every time the siren at the nearby fire station cut loose.  They, especially the young ones, would also follow my travels around the Preserve, sometimes just moments behind me and I would see them poking their curious noses out of the thick grasses watching me.

Bat Fork Bog Preserve and other places like it may be small but they can offer exceptional opportunities for the study of specific aspects of the natural history of the vanishing wet places of our world.

Publications

Baugh, T. and R.E. Evans. 2011. Restoration of a Southern Appalachian Mountain Bog Phase II-Hydrology. Natural Areas Journal  31(1)501-504.

Baugh, T., R.E. Evans, C.J Stewart, and S. Artebane. 2011. Restoration of a Southern Appalachian Mountain Bog: Phase I. Reed canary grass removal. Ecological Restoration 9(1):13-14.

Baugh, T. and K. Schlosser. [In press]. Management considerations for the restoration of bunched arrowhead Sagittaria fasciulata. Natural Areas Journal [January 2013].

Bog Days I

In 2010 I became the first Preserve Steward in the developing 
North Carolina Plant Conservation stewardship program.  All of my work for the program was undertaken in the increasingly rare mountain wetlands of Western North Carolina and a majority of it at Bat Fork Bog Plant Conservation Preserve, not far from my home in Henderson County.  My tenure at Bat Fork Bog was one of the more enjoyable field experiences I have had in a number of years.

Bat Fork Bog Plant Conservation Preserve is located in Henderson County in the mountains of Western North Carolina just outside of the County Seat of Hendersonville and only about 20 minutes from our home, Hidden Springs, on a rocky, forested ridge west of town.

 The Preserve is a remnant swamp-forest-bog complex that was purchased by the State of North Carolina in 1996 to protect several relatively rare plant species including a small, essentially nondescript, emergent species known as the bunched arrowhead (Sagittaria fasciculata).

The bog was, essentially, divided into two halves.  One half was forested and one half had been cleared of trees and shrubs and given over to a pasture-like area covered in reed canary grass.  Also, the reed canary grass had invaded an old canal, part of which hosted the only bunched arrowhead population on the Preserve.  Along with employees of the State of North Carolina, I spent a considerable amount of time during 2010 applying and monitoring an herbicide approved by EPA for application to aquatic sites.  

My first task was to become familiar with the Preserve.  I spent days wandering around the property rough-mapping distinguishable features and noting the location of plants of interest.   For a number of reasons, there had been very little interest in Bat Fork Bog over the preceding decade and most of that was focused on the one population of bunched arrowhead plants in the canal along the northern boundary of the Preserve. 


(Continued in the next post.)