Late Splurge No Effect on Wildlife

LATE SPLURGE NO EFFECT ON WILDLIFE
 November 01 & November 03

I had the pleasure recently in Belleville of doing a Power Point presentation for an auditorium of Retired Teachers of Ontario members. Titled, “Surviving The Big Freeze,” it was an in depth look at how all plants and animals prepare for and survive the winter. It’s something we think about at this time of the year, and I could tell as I worked my way through the presentation, that it had also been on the minds of the 90 or so members who were present that morning.

As I walked down the aisle, one member of the audience handed me a sheet of paper. On it was a collage of colour photos taken at a nearby conservation area, of a ruffed grouse that was acting more like a domestic chicken than it did a wild bird. The photos depicted two young boys being approached by an inquisitive ruffed grouse, one photo showing a boy actually holding the bird in his hands. I already knew about the strange behaviour of this bird as I had encountered it myself during July at this same location, although it seemed that this particular grouse was rushing the season a bit..

I have spoken of this strange behaviour known as “autumnal recrudescence” in this column before. If I may quote from the Susan Stiles poem: “What’s the reason for their warbling? Why on earth this late year splurge? The autumnal recrudescence of the amatory urge!”

And that’s exactly what it is. We see it a lot in ruffed grouse, brought on by the fall season with its shorter days, longer nights and cooler temperatures, approximating what birds during the mating season usually experience in the spring. One last hurrah before the season ends and the snow begins, you might say. One autumn at Sandbanks, as I walked a cross country ski trail through a plantation of Scot’s Pine, I was alarmed to see a ruffed grouse trailing along behind me for most of my walk that afternoon. Several times I tried for a photograph, but had to keep backing up just to keep the bird in focus, so quickly did it match my every step. The faster I walked, the faster he walked. We used to call this fall behaviour “being dopey,” but now we have this more academic term that can be assigned to the aberrant conduct displayed in the fall of the year.

Birds singing spring songs, attempts at building nests – all of these actions have been witnessed by birders in the field. It might also, partly, at least, explain the increase in living room window bird strikes in the fall, as they certainly seem to happen more frequently in autumn than in spring. Whatever the reason, recrudescence does result in some amusing observations. One year, a pair of sandhill cranes performed a spectacular mating dance along one county road south of Picton, from September and well into November, until winter weather cooled their overheated hormones. Almost daily, they could be seen by passersby as the birds faced each other and jumped high into the air, flapping their wings in great enthusiasm and expectations.

Other strange things occur in the fall too when weather fools Mother Nature. Last week, there were several lilacs in bloom in the Bethesda area of the county, just east of Fish Lake. The observer noted they looked quite out of place, given that the shrubs had already lost most of their leaves. And last week too, there were more lilacs in bloom along Highway 2 at Shannonville.

Some years ago, we noticed much the same phenomenon at Prince Edward Point during a period in late October when the area was experiencing unusually warm, summer weather. We also found lilacs in bloom, and many wildflowers as well, more typical of the early summer season. However, the most amazing discovery was a wild apple tree on the edge of the Point Traverse woods that was awash in apple blossoms! Curious as to how this sudden urge to burst into bloom would affect the apple crop next year, I paid close attention to the tree the following year. That spring, it once again burst into blossom, and produced a splendid crop of wild apples.

In “The Big Freeze” presentation in Belleville that morning, I stressed that many of us worry unnecessarily about whether birds, insects, mammals and herptiles will make it through the winter. However, thousands of years of evolutionary fine tuning has resulted in each species perfecting its ability to make it, no matter what Nature throws at it. It would also seem that this recrudescence – these encore stage performances – end up being nothing more than entertainment for us, and only a minor interruption in the normal lives of animals that share our living space.