The September photo of the month is of a black bear looking for a snack in a bird feeder. As a reminder, black bears are spending even more time looking for high-calorie food right now as they need to bulk up before hibernation. If they are wandering through your area, they will recognize that bird food provides them with lots of calories from one source and will see it as an excellent food source. To prevent bears from seeing your yard as a source of food, make sure to store food inside. Thank you to volunteer Paula Noonan for providing this picture!  

For any more mammal sightings, submit any photos to the form here!

Reminder to anyone with a Ring camera or similar security system installed; these systems help us collect important data on the presence and absence of mammals in your area. We welcome you to join our team of registered volunteers who submit photos once a month. Having regular reports from a fixed location allows us to learn even more about mammals in your area than individual sightings.  New volunteers can register here 

Picture of our SURF students Zaynah, Ellen, and Marie alongside our PI Dr. Thea Kristensen

This month, we presented our findings from our summer field research at a college-wide poster session! We focused our work on answering community questions regarding how increased human recreation impacted local wildlife living in the Holyoke Range. We studied recreational activities such as hiking, mountain biking, and four-wheeler vehicles, microclimate measures like humidity, air temperature, and soil temperature, and geographical features such as housing density, trail density, and elevation, and how they impacted local mammals living in the range. So far we’ve found that large mammals, specifically deer, seek to remain closer to areas like roads and further away from forests, likely to protect themselves from predators that do not frequent human-populated land. We aim to keep our trail cameras up throughout the year in hopes of collecting data on other mammals such as bears, coyotes, bobcats, and foxes. 

Picture from volunteer Susan Crim!

Get to know a mammal that is often misunderstood! With bushy tails and noticeable gray and slightly orange fur, Canis latrans, commonly known as coyotes, can be found throughout Massachusetts and typically live with their family or pack.  Coyotes are metaturnal (active day and night) but in urban settings they are most active at night and during sunset due to the protection of darkness. 

Coyotes typically make dens for their families with just one entrance.  Within a pack, members have different roles: a breeding pair, associate residents (helpers), and the pups born in the year or for some families pups may be older than a year.  Coyote offspring remain with their parents anywhere from 6 months to about 2 years of age before leaving the family den to claim a new area and start new relations  (Harrison et al. 1992)  .

Packs are present in both rural and urban settings, with coyotes acting as predators or scavengers depending on location and circumstance. In more rural settings or forests, coyotes typically eat rabbits, small to medium sized birds, squirrels, carrion, and berries and fruits.  Pups may also consume insects. In more urban settings, coyotes will often consume garbage, pet food--if found outside, and vegetables.

Coyotes do not hibernate but lessen activity in the winter to preserve energy, their coats go through a major molt in the spring but overall shed year round similar to dogs, their coats get thick by winter time.

Coyotes do not intentionally seek engagement with people. To coexist better with coyotes, keep pet food and water indoors, secure your garbage, and use fences if you have a yard where small pets roam.  MA Fish and Wildlife has additional guidelines for living with coyotes. 

Definitely share pictures of coyotes with MassMammals!  We are interested in what they up to and where they are spending time.

Picture from Project Skydrop.

Were you and your friends participating in project Skydrop? This was a recent contest to discover a gold statue in the woods in Massachusetts. Trail camera photos of the location were posted and participants were given a map that circled the area where the treasure was located. Each day the circled area decreased in size.  Participants were using all sorts of clues to help them find the treasure. They even used MassMammals to figure out where porcupines live in Massachusetts!  The winner, who was announced last week, ended up using weather clues from the trail camera to find the site!

The cost to join the hunt is $20, which grants access to daily clues and the members-only Discord server. MassMammals has been mentioned in this discord server, showing that people have been using our mammal map and lining it up with recent porcupine sightings to try and find the treasure!

Here is a news article that gives an insight into the treasure hunt and the next part of the game!