Category: Vertebrates

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Gila Monsters

‘Flower’ Gila Monster
Click for larger view
Copyright Daniel D. Beck
Central Washington University

Hi, I’m Holly Strand from Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

Turn up your radio and see if you can imagine the Utah creature who makes this sound.

[Sound: Jeff Rice, Gila Monster recorded at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum]

That was the gasping breathing of a gila monster. It was recorded by Jeff Rice of the University of Utah’s Western Soundscape Archive.

Gila Monsters occur in pockets across the desert southwest. In Utah they are found only in Mojave habitat in the southwest corner of Washington County.

Once you get to know them, gilas are not at all monstrous. They are the largest of all lizards native to the U.S. An average gila might be 14-16 in. in length and would weigh about a pound and a half. They have thick sausage-like tails and large heads. The scales on the backs of these lizards resemble a beadwork pattern of black, orange, pink, and yellow.

Of the nearly4000 lizard species in the entire world only two are venomous. And one of them is the gila monster. But only a small amount of venom is introduced during a bite—not enough to kill a healthy human. Nevertheless, the bites are notoriously painful.

Gila Monster
Click map for larger view
Copyright Daniel D. Beck
Central Washington University

But gilas are reluctant to strike. Victims of bites have usually provoked the lizard in some way. Before biting, the lizard will hiss, and then back away from its would-be attacker. But if these warning efforts fail, it will latch on with frightening speed and tenacity. For gilas are the pitbulls of the lizard world.

A long-held belief has been that the breath of a gila monster is nauseating and toxic. In fact, it was even thought that gilas killed their prey with halitosis. The truth is that like many other animals, a frightened gila may regurgitate a recent meal when molested. Because gilas have such a slow metabolism, that last meal might be pretty old and smelly. Also, excited or reproductively active monsters can transmit a detectable body odor which some people find offensive.

These days, you’d be very lucky to see a gila monster in the wild. For in many areas their numbers are decreasing though collection and habitat loss. Another reason is that gila monsters are homebodies. They spend up to 97% of their lifetime tucked away in burrows or rock crevices.

For sources and pictures of gila monsters, see www.wildaboututah.org.

Thanks to the Rocky Mountain Power Foundation for support of this Wild About Utah topic.

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Holly Strand.
Credits:

Images: Courtesy & Copyright Daniel D. Beck, Central Washington University

Text:     Holly Strand, Stokes Nature Center

Sources & Additional Reading

Beck, Daniel D. 2005. Biology of Gila monsters and beaded lizards

Beck, Daniel D.,1990. Ecology and behavior of the Gila Monster in southwestern Utah. Journal of Herpetology 24, pp. 54–68.

Brown, David. E. Carmony, Neil. B. 1999. Gila Monster : Facts and Folklore of America’s Aztec Lizard. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. https://www.amazon.com/Gila-Monster-Folklore-Americas-Lizard/dp/0874806003

Rice. Jeff. Western Soundscape Archive. J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, https://westernsoundscape.org/

State of Utah Natural Resources. Division of Wildlife Resources Species Database. Gila Monster. https://dwrcdc.nr.utah.gov/rsgis2/Search/Map.asp?Id=691 [Accessed Feb 2, 2010]

For More Information:

National Geographic . Wild Detectives: Gila Monster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59LRezTYkeo [Accessed Feb 2, 2010]

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum https://www.desertmuseum.org/books/nhsd_gila.php [Accessed Feb 2, 2010]

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Waxwings

Cedar Waxwing US FWS FWS Digital Library, David Menke, Photographer
Cedar Waxwing
Courtesy
US FWS Digital Library
David Menke, Photographer


For the chance to admire a flock of Utah’s most rakishly handsome songbirds, look to the sky or trees when you hear this call:

[Kevin Colver, Cedar Waxwing, Songbirds of Yellowstone and the High Rockies…]

That high, thin whistle indicates waxwings. All winter long, waxwings stick together in dense, cohesive flocks that fluidly fly and forage as one. Like locusts, a flock will swarm over a mountain ash, juniper or hawthorn, quickly stripping it of the small fruits that constitute their diet. They eat a wide variety of small fruits from berries to grapes to cherries. Cedar waxwings are commonly seen throughout Utah all winter long. They are nomadic; traveling to where ever fruit is abundant. Some winters, they are joined here by their northern cousins, the Bohemian waxwings. Both waxwings are debonair, with a sweptback crest and an angular black Zorro mask. The name waxwing refers to a line of scarlet waxy droplets at the tips of specialized wing feathers. More likely you’ll notice the bar of lemon-yellow feather tips across the tail. Both of those colors come from pigments in their fruity diets. The body of the smaller Cedar waxwing is more caramel-colored than the grayer Bohemian waxwing. Bohemian waxwings have a distinct rufus patch of feathers beneath the tail.

Cedar Waxwing feeding on berries
David Menke, US FWS
FWS Digital Library

So remember to pay attention when you hear that high-pitched whistle and look around you for trees decorated with these snazzy-looking waxwings. They will surely put some zing in your drab winter day.

Thanks to Kevin Colver for the use of his bird recordings.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:

Bohemian Waxwing Copyright © 2006 Stephen Peterson

Bird Recordings: Courtesy & Copyright Kevin Colver, Cedar Waxwing, Songbirds of Yellowstone and the High Rockies… //wildaboututah.org/about-us/#7loons

Pictures: David Menke, US FWS Digital Library

Courtesy & Copyright 2006 Stephen Peterson

Text: Jim Cane, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading:

Bohemian Waxwings Copyright © 2006 Stephen Peterson

Creating Landscapes for Wildlife …A Guide to Backyard Gardens in Utah, https://digitallibrary.utah.gov/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=10215

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New Celebrants for Old Christmas Trees

Christmas Tree on the curb
Courtesy University of Illinois Extension

As a word, “repurposing” grates a little on my ear, but the concept is laudable. At my home, we reuse items in new ways for birdfeeding. Our main bird feeder hangs from the trunk of a venerable old apple tree in our backyard. In winter, the apple offers fruits and perches aplenty, but no cover for hungry juncos, chickadees and finches.

What they want are the thick boughs of a conifer. After every Christmas, there is just such a tree, all decorated, standing in our living room. Rather than hurling that tree on the municipal heap straightaway — a rather abrupt fall from grace, if you ask me — we prop it up beneath our feeder, giving it new purpose as a shelter for feeding birds. They duck in and out of its needled boughs all day long. Some even roost there at night. Beneath it, ground feeding birds can safely clean up the seeds that rain down from the feeder above. A ring of upturned tomato cages beneath the feeder — that otherwise lie idle in our vegetable garden — are given a winter purpose of impeding any stray cats interested in the birds beneath our seed feeder. For no cost and scant effort, we provide our feeder birds with shelter from winter storms and protection from feline predators.

Don’t forget water for the birds in winter. Open water can be a scarce commodity. In areas with freezing temperatures, there are heating elements to put in an existing birdbath or baths with a heating element encased in the base. In our yard, the birdbath is as popular as the seed feeders.

Birds appreciate the simple gifts: shelter from a discarded Christmas tree, a feeder full of seed and water to drink.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:
Bird Sounds: Courtesy Kevin Colver
Text: Jim Cane and Linda Kervin, Bridgerland Audubon SocietyBridgerland Audubon Society, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Voice: Linda Kervin, Bridgerland Audubon SocietyBridgerland Audubon Society, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading:

Wild About Utah pieces by Linda Kervin and Jim Cane

Bird Habitat Necessities, Audubon.org, https://www.audubon.org/bird/at_home/HealthyYard_BirdHabitat.html

Don’t toss your tree: Help local wildlife, Wildlife Blog, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, https://wildlife.utah.gov/news/wildlife-blog/827-dont-toss-your-christmas-tree.html

 

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Rocky the Flying Squirrel

Northern Flying Squirrel
Photo Courtesy
Phil Myers (photographer, copyright holder)
Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
3.0 Unported License.

Hi, I’m Holly Strand from Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

There’s a large paper wasp nest on display on a bookcase at the Nature Center. Last week, Anna and I noticed some strange noises emanating from it. It even seemed to move a little on the shelf. We carefully –and a bit nervously–approached to investigate. I picked up the nest and it began to shake vigourously. Then a live missile shot out of the opening. It was a chubby little squirrel with huge dark eyes. He jumped from the bookcase and went scurrying across the floor with Anna and I in hot pursuit. Then he scampered up to the top of a door frame. We tried to catch him with a cardboard box, but he spread his little legs out wide and went sailing over our heads, landing smoothly on floor across the room. And then he ran under the couch. We stood there in amazement. He wasn’t your normal squirrel—he was a flying squirrel!

The northern flying squirrel is one of two flying squirrels found in United States, the other being the southern flying squirrel . Northern flying squirrels occur in many of Utah’s mountainous areas, primarily in mature coniferous forests and riparian zones.

According to Mike Wolfe at the Utah State University’s College of Natural Resources, they aren’t exactly rare in Logan Canyon. In fact, they are active here throughout the year, but they’re completely nocturnal. So many people never see them and are surprised to find that we have them.

Flying squirrels don’t really fly. They glide. They have a loose fold of skin known as a patagium which runs along each side of the body from the ankle of the hind leg to the wrist of the foreleg. When they stretch this membrane and launch they instantly become a furry paraglider, capable of covering great distances using a small fraction of the energy it would take to run.

Rocky, as we called the nature visitor, proved very difficult to catch. In the end, we used a live trap baited with apples and sunflower seeds. On Thanksgiving morning, my husband and I found him sitting in it, wishing he were somewhere else. We took him up the canyon and released him. He scampered up a tree and seemed to regard us thoughtfully. On the way back to the car, I looked back once more and was lucky enough to see one last beautiful 20 ft glide from tree to tree.

Thanks to the USU College of Natural Resources for supporting research and development of this Wild About Utah topic.

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Holly Strand.
Credits:

Images: Courtesy Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Phil Myers (photographer, copyright holder), Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, licensed under CCA-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Text:     Holly Strand, Stokes Nature Center

Sources & Additional Reading:

Flyingsquirrels.com  [Accessed December 4, 2009]

Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.  Utah Conservation Data Center. Species database.  NORTHERN FLYING SQUIRREL.  https://dwrcdc.nr.utah.gov/rsgis2/Search/Display.asp?FlNm=glausabr  [Accessed December 04, 2009]

Malamuth, E. and M. Mulheisen. 1999. “Glaucomys sabrinus” (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Glaucomys_sabrinus/pictures/collections/contributors/phil_myers/classic/sabrinus1/   [Accessed December 04, 2009]