Way OT: A moose at the beach

Hi all.

Sorry for wasting your time with yet another wildlife incident,
but this one is just too weird not to mention. At 4 AM this
morning, I was driving by the road towards a bay where in the
past I have seen various types of wildlife. This is where I
saw the eagles and foxes on the roadkill moose, and a few
weeks ago I saw a "hubro" owl (Eng.: eagle owl, lat.: bubo
bubo).

This morning it was low tide. The mud beach, a couple
of hundred meters wide, was exposed all out. While on the
main road, I did get a glimpse of something unusual out
there at the beach, but the midnight sun was up, 5 degrees
above the road ahead, so I had more than enough with seeing
(and staying on) the main road. The midnight sun is very
awkward in that respect, that the sun hovers just above the
horizon, obstructing vision, for hours on end. Beautiful
scenery, yes, but very inconvenient if it happens to hover
just above the road you are supposed to be driving on.

As I turned away from the main road, I got a clear view of
the beach. Sure enought, there was something very out of
the ordinary out there: A moose. It turned out to be an
adult cow, alone, no calfs. When I first saw her, she was
stnding in the water, sipping salt water. She then went
back into the mud beach and started feeding on kelp that
was exposed at low tide.

I watched her for between 50 minutes and an hour. I made
some noise, as well as found myself at a very exposed
vantage point, when I set up my telescope kit. She did
notice me, but as far as I could see, she didn't mind as
long as I did not make any sudden moves or make any more
noise, after I had found my position. She had found "her"
pile of kelp and fed quietly on that.

My brother-in-law, the moose hunter, told me mooses (is that
the correct plural of "moose"?) seldom go to the beach.
Perhaps she had some sort of helath problem and needed the
salt or other nutriants from the kelp. It is, apparently,
not common to see a cow in her best age with no calfs
following her at this time of the year. Or it could be
that this is a young animal that will get her first litter
only next year. I am not a skilled evaluator of mooses
(moose hunters, like my brother-in-law, need to be, or
they might find themselves in trouble for shooting
animals of the wrong sex or age group), and my pictures
were not clear enough to indicate her presice age.

Anyway, I got some really nice pictures. I'll see if I can
post them somewhere duing the next couple of days. 

Rune

Rune Allnor wrote:

> mooses (is that the correct plural of "moose"?) 

The plural is also "moose". I looked it up here:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=moose

-- 
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

"Rune Allnor" <allnor@tele.ntnu.no> wrote in message 
news:1120502372.444321.36960@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi all.
>
> Sorry for wasting your time with yet another wildlife incident,
> but this one is just too weird not to mention. At 4 AM this
> morning, I was driving by the road towards a bay where in the
> past I have seen various types of wildlife. This is where I
> saw the eagles and foxes on the roadkill moose, and a few
> weeks ago I saw a "hubro" owl (Eng.: eagle owl, lat.: bubo
> bubo).

Rune,

About a year ago we saw a bull elk (male Cervus elaphus) stuck in the 
tidewater mud up to the top of its legs.  We called the wildlife protectors 
and they said it was OK by itself out there.  I don't know its fate.  They 
are very large animals so I have no idea what anyone could have done should 
they have been so disposed.

We look down on tide mud flats at low tide and one day saw two coyotes 
(Canis latrans) trotting along the edge of the shore of the exposed mud.  We 
see coyotes on land in the forest often enough but this was a rare sight.

Fred








 

Fred Marshall wrote:
> "Rune Allnor" <allnor@tele.ntnu.no> wrote in message
> news:1120502372.444321.36960@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > Hi all.
> >
> > Sorry for wasting your time with yet another wildlife incident,
> > but this one is just too weird not to mention. At 4 AM this
> > morning, I was driving by the road towards a bay where in the
> > past I have seen various types of wildlife. This is where I
> > saw the eagles and foxes on the roadkill moose, and a few
> > weeks ago I saw a "hubro" owl (Eng.: eagle owl, lat.: bubo
> > bubo).
>
> Rune,
>
> About a year ago we saw a bull elk (male Cervus elaphus) stuck in the
> tidewater mud up to the top of its legs.  We called the wildlife protectors
> and they said it was OK by itself out there.  I don't know its fate.  They
> are very large animals so I have no idea what anyone could have done should
> they have been so disposed.

"To intervene or not to intervene..."

There are a couple of very popular "nature shows" on national Norwegian

TV where the public can send their home videos of anumals they see in
nature. Every now and then, there are "ugly" stories emerge. One such
video I remember particularly well, was a golden eagle that strikes on
a
pair of male capercaillies (tetrao urogallus) that were in the middle
of a "mating battle" (i.e. the males fight between themselves to decide

who is to become "king of the turf"). The eagle struck down one of the
two combattants, killing it, but the other capercaillie did not
withdraw.
It continued fighting the now dead rival. The eagle was less than
amused,
so he plented a claw in the middle of the chest of the secon
capercaillie,
killing it, too. Now there is one golden iegle, sitting on the ground
with one fully grown, dead male capercaillie in each claw. Brilliant
TV,
but the voice-over stated "the person who filmed this incident chose
not to intervene". In my view, humans should not intervene unless
humans caused the incident, or if livestock is involved.

Of course, with an animal as large as an elk, there may be other
concerns,
like the inconvenient presence of a large carcass in some area. That
may
be a very good reason for intervening and getting the animal out of
trouble.

> We look down on tide mud flats at low tide and one day saw two coyotes
> (Canis latrans) trotting along the edge of the shore of the exposed mud.  We
> see coyotes on land in the forest often enough but this was a rare sight.

To most people, moose ("elg" in Norwegian, is "moose" and "elk" the
same
animal in English?) is something to be avoided, since the interaction
between people and moose usually represents quite a hazard. I don't
know
the exact numbers, but there are probably a few thousand moose (and a
handfull of people) killed in collisions between moose and cars every
year. There are even "weird" incidents in cities. Some ten years ago,
I saw a young moose just outside my office windows in the outskirt of
Trondheim city. Just a couple of weeks ago, four moose were reported
spotted in downtown Trondheim. As far as I know, three of them had
to be put down.

So much more fun, then, to be able to watch an animal in its
undisturbed, natural environment for an extended period of time.
I've checked a bit more about the behaviour of the animal, and
like most herbvoars(?), moose need to get some salt every now
and then. So the moose feeding on kelp need not mean anything
more than that she had her weekly (or monthly) trip to the beach
for some salty snack.

I don't know why, but after I developed this interst for birds, I've
started noticing all sorts of wildlife. A couple of days ago, I saw
three - 3 - foxes in three different locations the course of a couple
of hours. Before that, I might have seen three foxes in total over
the last ten years. Last night, my brother-in-law and I were driving
to a site very poplular among hobby fishermen. Lots of fish, thousands
of birds (mostly gulls), a couple of hundred people. While most people
focused on the sea and the fishing, I found an almost weird pleasure
in (apparently) being the only person present that had noticed the
eagle patrolling high above, let alone knowing that the eagle was
a golden eagle (aquila chrysaetos) and not a sea eagle (haliaeetus
albicilla) which is the one we would expect to see at that site.
The definitive highlight of the night was to see (again, apparently
being the only person present to notice the bird) an arctic skua
(stercorarius parasiticus) that patrolled the beach we were
fishing from. That's the first skua ever, for me! My brother-in-law
got his sighting for the night when we saw four common cranes (grus
grus) on a field just a few kilometers from his home.

Again, it's like I for the first time have started to notice what's
actually going on around here. It's a weird experience, when I ask
people what they think of that owl that just flew by, "What owl?!
Wasn't that a common gull?"

I think I've said it before, the charm of the SVD and Goertzel's
algorithm aren't quite the same after one or two such incidents.

Rune

Rune,
The American elk (also named wapiti by the Shawnee Indians)
is a large member of the deer family and is quite a different
critter than what we call a moose.  Our moose is chiefly
distinguished by its palmated antlers, humped front shoulders
and its sometimes aggressive behavior towards humans, cars,
trucks and even locomotives.

That nothwithstanding, both are large powerful animals and not
to be confronted unless one is armed with a large-bore weapon.

Regards,
Ken Asbury

Rune Allnor wrote:

   ...

> To most people, moose ("elg" in Norwegian, is "moose" and "elk" the same
> animal in English?) is something to be avoided, since the interaction
> between people and moose usually represents quite a hazard. 

   ...

Moose: http://www.nps.gov/yell/nature/animals/moose/moose.html
Elk:   http://www.nps.gov/yell/nature/animals/elk/elk.html

Even a domesticated bull can be a hazard.

Jerry
-- 
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
�����������������������������������������������������������������������

Jerry Avins wrote:
> Rune Allnor wrote:
>
>    ...
>
> > To most people, moose ("elg" in Norwegian, is "moose" and "elk" the same
> > animal in English?) is something to be avoided, since the interaction
> > between people and moose usually represents quite a hazard.
>
>    ...
>
> Moose: http://www.nps.gov/yell/nature/animals/moose/moose.html
> Elk:   http://www.nps.gov/yell/nature/animals/elk/elk.html

Thanks. "Moose" is definately the correct term here.

> Even a domesticated bull can be a hazard.

Heh, my grandfather had a horse on his farm when I was a kid. This
horse had a fole(?) that was a few months old when I came to visit
for the summer holiday; I would have been 7 or 8 years old this
particular summer.

When not working, the horse was tied with a foot chain just outside
the main building, so that it was free to move and feed in a 10-15
meter radius fom the pole. The fole ran free, never going far from
his mother. This summer day I was walking around the farm, no T-shirt
on. As kids tend to do, I had gone to the horses. As I turned to
walk away from there, I felt a stinging pain in my back, just between
my shoulder blades. It was the fole, that for some reason had decided
to bite me. I don't think he bit very hard, but those teeth were
sharp!

So take it from me, I've got it from the horse's mouth, never turn
your back to a three-months-old fole...

Rune

"Rune Allnor" <allnor@tele.ntnu.no> writes:
> To most people, moose ("elg" in Norwegian,
> is "moose" and "elk" the same animal in English?)

Definitely not in North America.

> is something to be avoided,

Rune Allnor wrote:

-snip-

> To most people, moose ("elg" in Norwegian, is "moose" and "elk" the
> same
> animal in English?) is something to be avoided, since the interaction
> between people and moose usually represents quite a hazard. I don't
-snip-
> 
> Rune
> 
North American Elk resemble very large deer; North American Moose are (I 
belive) in the same family biologically but they have different ranges 
and strickingly different horns.  They're both good eating, they're both 
large, and they're both big enough to be dangerous and they're both 
ornrey during mating season.

-- 
-------------------------------------------
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Rune Allnor wrote:

   ...

> Heh, my grandfather had a horse on his farm when I was a kid. This
> horse had a fole(?) that was a few months old when I came to visit
> for the summer holiday; I would have been 7 or 8 years old this
> particular summer.
> 
> When not working, the horse was tied with a foot chain just outside
> the main building, so that it was free to move and feed in a 10-15
> meter radius fom the pole. The fole ran free, never going far from
> his mother. This summer day I was walking around the farm, no T-shirt
> on. As kids tend to do, I had gone to the horses. As I turned to
> walk away from there, I felt a stinging pain in my back, just between
> my shoulder blades. It was the fole, that for some reason had decided
> to bite me. I don't think he bit very hard, but those teeth were
> sharp!
> 
> So take it from me, I've got it from the horse's mouth, never turn
> your back to a three-months-old fole...

Yes! (Foal.)

My cousin (older than my mother) had a dairy farm and a son a bit older 
than I. There was once a bull calf when we visited, and the older kid 
got me to ride the bull on a dare. I found I could steer him my using 
his nubby horn buds like handlebars on a bicycle. We visited again a few 
month's later, and I didn't need encouragement to ride the now-3/4-size 
bull with real horns. Obviously, I lived. At first, it was all I could 
do to hang on, but when he calmed down I could steer him, and front and 
back worked for fast and slow too. He seemed to like the game, and my 
cousin (once removed) played it in my absence and eventually rigged a 
saddle. The next summer, the bull being fully grown but saved from the 
slaughterhouse by his tameness and family sentimentality, I rode him 
into town alongside my cousin on his horse. We tied both animals to the 
hitching rail in front of the hardware store, finished our errands, and 
rode home with half the residents of the town gawking at us. If caribou 
can pull a sled, why not?

Jerry
-- 
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
�����������������������������������������������������������������������