Possible Black Bear excavation at Luckiamute SNA prairie today

[Joel Geier]

Sorry no photos but I'll try to go back for some in the next day or two.

During today's prairie planting work party at Luckiamute State Natural
Area we noticed a dug-out area that looked more ambitious in scale than
what you usually see when coyotes have been digging out rodents. Also
what seemed to be claw marks were spaced an inch or more apart. I can't
think of any other digging animals other than badgers that would leave
that kind of sign.

This was in the same area that had a very large ground-nesting wasp
nest in the summer of 2015, so one possibility is that a bear was
digging out dormant wasp larvae/pupae.

A nearby area had more typical-looking Coyote excavations of vole
burrows.

We took advantage of both of these places to spread prairie seeds on the
fresh bare soil.

--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis

[Don Boucher]

Hi Joel,

Sounds like a bear, especially with claw marks so widely spaces between digits. Striped skunks are fantastic diggers too, and are more capable than coyotes in some ways. Skunks often dig up yellowjacket nests. The way they dig is similar to a bear, with the main difference being a matter of scale.

-Don Boucher

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mid-Valley Nature" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mid-valley-nat...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to mid-vall...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mid-valley-nature.

[Joel Geier]

Hi Don (& all),

Thanks for commenting. Here are a couple of photos of the excavation, from Monday morning.  The ground was partly frozen, especially where loose dirt from the excavation was piled up.

If anyone wonders about the broad-leaf plant near the excavation, this is a Sidalcea sp. (probably Sidalcea virgata, or Rose Checkermallow), grown from previous years' plantings.

Joel