A Vinyl County Almanac

A few weekends ago (many weekends now, as I kept forgetting to finish writing this post), my younger sibling and I were pulling into my parent’s driveway when we noticed movement in the middle of the yard. Backing up slightly, our headlights illuminated a thrilling scene — a red fox in middle of a well-earned Friday night meal consisting of what appeared to be some kind of small mammal (my best guess was a squirrel). After watching with my own eyes for a while, I took out my phone and filmed the video posted below before my parents pulled in behind us and the fox ran off. I went over to inspect the area where he was eating, but didn’t find anything — unfortunate for my own curiosity, but good that we didn’t cause him to abandon his meal. As is so often the case with these sorts of surprise interactions with wild animals, seeing this fox brought up what I thought was an interesting question — namely, what do urban and suburban foxes eat? Typically, when we think of urban wildlife, we th...

Acorns! (1) Do a quick Google Images search for “wildlife biologist” and you’ll probably get the impression that scientists researching wild animals spend a significant amount of their time in the field, directly handling the creatures that they are studying — catching snakes, measuring the wings of songbirds, and keeping baby bears warm in their jackets while a radio collar is affixed to their mother. All of these activities are important in certain kinds of research, but the frequency of their depiction in news articles, government websites, and TV shows provides a somewhat skewed picture of what an “average” workday looks like for a wildlife professional. Academic biologists have classes to teach, grants to apply for, and papers to write and usually only spend a few weeks every year out in the field. Likewise, fulltime government biologists are kept busy answering questions from citizens, analyzing data, and writing reports; they get out in the field too, but a lot of the data colle...

Grey squirrel ( Sciurus carolinensis ) (1) It’s a beautiful, crisp October day and I am sitting in the porch with my dog, watching the world go by. Right now, the main source of interest for the both of us is a grey squirrel, scurrying across our neighbor’s driveway and into their yard, where he sniffs around, parting the grass and occasionally picking up a small seed or other piece of food to process and stuff into his cheek pouches. Somewhere on the street behind us, a raven prruk s and a woodpecker babbles, though my mind is not quick enough to focus and discern what kind.  Suddenly, there is movement in a bush at the edge of our neighbor’s yard, and my dog and I both turn our heads just in time to see the legs and tail of a black cat glide into the cover of its lower branches. We both shift slightly, tracking the speed of the cat and settling our gazes on the next gap in the bush. A moment later, there is movement and the dappled shadows in the gap darken and solidify. Then, st...

The other night, I was out for a walk when I heard a strange noise - like something between a bark and a screech - coming from one street over. I have mostly lived in more urban or suburban areas, and I hear night cries like this one so infrequently that I always have to do some detective work to figure out what they are, since I've usually forgotten what the last one sounded like and what I finally decided it was. I do know enough, however, to always start my search in the same place, with a species that was probably responsible for most of the strange noises that kept you up at camp or gave you goose bumps while watching a bigfoot hunting reality show. In a suburb like this one, it is almost guaranteed to be the culprit behind any strange cries in the night and indeed, turned out to be source of this one - the red fox.  One of our neighborhood foxes making a "vixen scream." Red foxes ( Vulpes vulpes ) are surprisingly vocal creatures that make a wide variety of barks, y...