New Trip Report: New England Notes
Venkat Sankar is now on the east coast of the USA. Though he is finding New England’s mammal watching to be a little less exciting than California, he has found some nice stuff.
New England, 2017: Venkat Sankar’s notes from a few short trips, with species including Porcupine, Mink, Southern Flying Squirrels and Meadow Jumping Mice.
Jon
5 Comments
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vnsankar
Thanks! I honestly shouldn’t have even attempted to ID the bat–I saw it fly by a couple times in the light, fairly close, as I walked along a path near a stream. All I can say is I’m quite sure it was a Myotis, but I know very little about Eastern bats. The reason why I narrowed it to lucifugus vs. septentrionalis was because these were the only 2 Myotis recorded in recent surveys of the Quabbin area. I was pretty happy just to see a bat at all as I thought they were pretty much gone from the area due to WNS 🙁
It seems to be a good year for flying squirrels, White-footed Mice, and jumping mice out here so I’m trying to stay optimistic on the Fisher…
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vnsankar
Clay,
Here’s where I found out about the Eastern Coyote, Bobcat, Moose, etc. sightings at Quabbin: http://www.northquabbinphotography.com/quabbin-coyotes/
it’s a photographer’s site and it seems like he sees them regularly there. I’m thinking I’ll contact him before I head out there again to see if he has any tips on where to look for these species in the area.
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Curtis Hart
That’s pretty good for the eastern US. You can’t reliably ID M. lucifugus and M. septentrionalis by ear size, there is overlap. You really need to see each tragus, as occasionally a luci will have one normal tragus and one that looks pretty sep like. How exactly did you see the bat, was it roosted? M. leibi could be in the area as well. In my opinion, the best book on eastern bat ID is The Wild Mammals of Missouri. MO has most of the eastern species and the book has some great drawings of tragus shape and toe hair.
Good luck in MA. Hopefully you get a Fisher soon!