Kamchatka in the time ... Jody & Tanya's wildlife adventures -- predators!

I had to hug this Betula ermanii! (stone birch)

 3 April 2020 [excuse a few format issues]

The biggest stone birch ever! Tanya photo, JB scale

As covered in my previous blog, Kamchatka has been ordered to self-isolate, and as has most of the country now.  I have discovered the best resource for following the HISTORY of coronavirus decisions and events for Russa -- it's Wikipedia -- updated every day but of course not authoritative, what is authoritative these days of rapid change?  It has a history of when COVID19 got started in Russia, from where, what decisions have been made, it debunks some stupid rumors (I think, more later on that) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Russia

Kamchatka has joined the "full" lockdown" group.  From Wikipedia 3 April 2020

Yesterday, we managed to keep social distance and go cross-country skiing in the snowy birch forest (see our trophy stone birch above).  No one stopped us, and there were other cars at the ski center, but we saw NO ONE on our own forest trek, which started with a walk through an area of dachas, rather than at the ski center.

Quote of the day, from Tanya, "It's so nice to be able to go into the forest without worrying about bears."


Jody and Tanya's excellent Kamchatka wildlife adventures, part 2 -- the predators 

We think this is a fox-hare encounter, ski & pole shadow for scale

In the last blog on this topic, Kamchatka in the time... Northern hares!, I decided to pause before the "last" part of the northern hare story.  As we were skiing along, looking at various footprints, we came upon the remains of a drama.  Two different sets of prints, a recently dug hole, kind of a mess!  We can't say exactly what happened, of course, but being detectives of the geological sort, used to reconstructing prehistoric earthquakes and tsunamis, we began to investigate and come up with plausible scenarios.  We think a fox dug the hole, there are a set of dog-like prints.  There also is a set of prints from a northern hare.  But in what order did things happen?  Who dug the hole and why?

The remains of the fox's meal, a hare's foot in pieces.

At first, we thought maybe the fox had dug down to get a "mouse" [mostly they are voles]. Then we found some remains of what apparently was the fox's prey.  Tanya thought it was from a mouse, I thought it was something bigger and furrier.  I poked around at the remains, and it became clear it was the remains of a "rabbit's [hare's] foot.

This was the same day that we actually spotted a hare (see prior blog).  But why the hole?  Did the hare start to burrow, then the fox got to it? I even speculated that the fox had stored a previous kill under the snow and recovered it.  But there were fresh hare prints, as well as the fox prints, so likely the whole drama played out in the night before the day we came there -- prints very fresh.  Fox 1, Hare 0.

Somewhere in my old, pre-digital photo archive, I have pictures of Kamchatka foxes in the field, but not with me and not scanned, so here is a gorgeous photo by Sergey Gorshkov.  Frankly, most of the foxes I have seen are scrawnier and scruffier than this one!  [By the way, chanterelle mushrooms in Russian are called "little foxes"due to their color.]

лисичка is chanterelle in Russian.

A Kamchatka fox.  Sergey Gorshkov.  https://viola.bz/kamchatka-animals-by-sergey-gorshkov/kamchatka-animals-5/

The track of a lynx, inset of one print.

  рысь is lynx in Russian.

There was also set of large prints, which we might have attributed to a large domestic dog, if closer to "civilization" - we have seen LOTS of doggie prints, including, of course dogsled dogs.  BUT these prints were rounder and did not show any claws, the characteristics of cat prints.  This cat had roamed all around the area we were skiing in/on.  It had to be a lynx! [no tigers here!]

We had seen some lynx prints a couple years ago in the snow, but not so many trails/tracks, all likely from the same animal going over its territory and probably hunting for foxes or hares.
And way back in 2001, my first winter on Kamchatka, I, along with many other city residents, had the rare experience of seeing a lynx -- in the city, in a tree.  The best explanation is that this lynx got lost during a blizzard, ended up near the edge of town, and was treed by a stray-dog pack.  I took pictures, but didn't have a zoom.  At one time I had a print from Yuriy Egorov, but it's lost.  So here is a pretty-pixelated couple of photos of a wild lynx, later sedated and taken back to the wild.

Jody's pictures of a lynx in Petropavlovsk, 2001.

And so you can really appreciate the fabulous beauty of a Kamchatka lynx, here is a photo from  a website about the Russian lynx.

The Russian lynx.  https://www.rgo.ru/en/projects/protection-endangered-species-lynx/about-lynx

And--I have gotten to this point with the best yet -- a real-time, actual sighting of a predator!  We were skiing (walking style) along talking about possibly being the object of a predator -- the lynx surely, if only one of us was there, or a bear, but they are still hibernating (and are not generally predatory except of fish here).  Tanya mentioned eagles, and I talked about being attacked once by a crow (protecting another crow I was trying to help)....  when SWOOP went a large brownish, hawk-like bird, who then perched in a birch.  From some distance we thought it looked like an owl, with a rounded head, but it had a longish tail; and what was it doing out in the middle of the day?  Tanya got closer, while I watched this marvelous bird swivel its head -- surely an owl.  Tanya got a few photos, and yes indeed, it was a northern hawk owl, Surnia ulula.  Glory be!