WildMaven’s World

Do you have any pine trees in your area? Do they have decaying cavities in them? Well, perhaps you have one of the largest woodpeckers in North America, the pileated woodpecker, living inside! They like to nest in such spots and will peck away at the hole so that the sap will flow, making for a really sticky entrance, which keeps predators away. Trees used for roosting may have as many as 16 exits to allow quick escape. It has been found that the male woodpecker does 3 times the work as the female when it comes to making the nest. (YAY!) They very seldom use an old nest again, though they may use the hole for roosting. It usually takes 3-6 weeks to make a suitable nest. Both parents feed the youngsters. A lot of their excavated holes are abandoned, only half finished, providing homes for many other species, especially tree-nesting ducks.

They eat insects, seeds, fruits, and sometimes sap from the trees. Their favorite food is carpenter ants, and they can be found sitting around on the forest floor searching for those yummy insects.

With their bright red caps, white streaks, and long necks, they are hard to miss. The male even has a bright red mustache to complete his dapper look. Most photos of the pileated woodpecker show them sitting on a tree, but if you are lucky, you will get to see it in flight. They are white under their wings, edged in black. Beautiful.

The pileated woodpecker has been removed from the status of endangered species, but you’ll still count yourself lucky to see one.

Quahog (pronounce KWA-hog)

No, it’s not a made-up word to give you more points in Scrabble. The Quahog is a mollusk found buried in sandy areas in the North Atlantic ocean. They also go by the names hard shell, steamer, or cherrystone clams. Northern American Indians used them for food, ornamentation, and currency. It is rumored that the quahog helped the pilgrims fight off starvation during the lean times. The Northern Quahog has a purple-tinted shell and eats plankton.

The hunt for a quahog can be a pleasant experience. You wade up to your waist, digging around with your toes until you feel the clam. After many disappointments of pulling up nothing but rocks, you eventually get the feel for it and get to bring home dinner.

Due to commercial overfishing, their numbers are diminishing close to the coast. Some populations may not rebound for decades because the quahog have a very slow reproductive rate. If allowed to mature, quahogs can live over 200 years! Now that’s an OLD clam!

Ready for a dose of reality? There are only an estimated 350 mountain gorillas remaining in the Virunga Mountains and 290 in the Bwindi Forest. Poaching destroyed their numbers dramatically until, in the early 1980’s, Dian Fossey brought their plight to the public. Males don’t reach maturity until they are 10-13 years old, at which time they begin to develop the silver patch of hair on their backs. Females who are taking care of a young one, will not mate for about 4 years. These all contribute to the slow rate of recovery in their numbers. A more recent tragedy struck the gorilla: the war in Rwanda, which destroyed prime mountain gorilla habitat as humans moved into camps at the edges of their territory.

Highly socialized, the mountain gorillas will protect each other and even mourn the death of a member of the group. They have a vocabulary all their own, which includes chuckling, belching, barking, hooting, screaming, chest-beating and roaring.

Not the creatures portrayed in movies such as “King Kong”, the mountain gorilla would rather spend its time eating, playing and napping. They are mostly vegetarians and favor bamboo shoots, fruit, vines, roots, wild celery and bark. Gorillas do not know how to swim, so it is a good thing they get most of their daily water supply from the foods they eat. (The first gorillas (lowland) brought into captivity were fed hamburgers!)

The mountain gorilla was “discovered” in 1902 when Captain Oscar von Beringe followed native reports of ape-monsters that came from the volcanic mountains.

There are no mountain gorillas in captivity, so captive breeding programs are not an option to preserve these beautiful creatures. (Most gorillas you see in the zoos are lowland gorillas). An end must be found to the political unrest which is threatening the work of the late Dian Fossey and others who followed in her footsteps.

It is ironic that the natives considered them to be “the protectors of the living.” Think about it…