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Posts Tagged ‘marmota monax’

Groundhog in the forest

Posted in animals, Nature, Photography, spring, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on April 17, 2021| 14 Comments »

I was a little shocked last week at Prince William Forest Park, when I spotted a groundhog (Marmota monax) scampering down a trail heading right towards me as I was resting on a log. The groundhog must have sensed my presence, because it suddenly stopped, sniffed the air, and headed back in the direction from which it had come.

When I first detected the animal coming my way, I thought it might be a bear cub. Yes, I know that it is the wrong color and shape for a bear cub, but I had seen the signs at the park entrance to be aware of bears. According to news report, wildlife cameras at the park detected a black bear coming out of hibernation in February of this year. It may look like I was pretty far away from the groundhog, but I actually took this photo with the same 180mm macro lens that I used to photograph yesterday’s small dragonfly.

I thought about rewording the first paragraph that I had also used on a Facebook posting, but decided to leave it untouched. Several of my friends suggested that the groundhog might have gotten closer if I had taken a shower—I definitely left myself open for that interpretation by the way that I worded the last sentence of the first paragraph. I have always felt that it is good to be able to laugh at yourself—as someone once noted, it guarantees that you will have an endless source of humor.

groundhog

groundhog

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Groundhog Day

Posted in animals, Nature, Photography, spring, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , on March 14, 2020| 21 Comments »

Yesterday, Friday the 13th, was also Groundhog Day for me—I spotted this Groundhog (Marmota monax) while exploring one of the trails at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. At first I thought it might be a beaver or a muskrat, species that I am more used to seeing, but I got a good look at its tail and it was clearly not the flattened tail of a beaver nor the long rat-like tail of a muskrat.

When hearing of groundhogs, some Americans will immediately think of the annual celebration when a groundhog is taken out of its burrow and forecasts the length of the winter, depending on whether or not it can see its shadow. Others will think instead of the 1993 comedy movie Groundhog Day in which the actor Bill Murray is caught in a loop and repeats the same day over and over again. A few others might recall an ongoing GEICO insurance commercial in which woodchucks (another name for groundhogs) chuck wood.

It turns out that I actually know very little about these animals so I did a little research and learned that groundhogs are one of the few species that enter into true hibernation. According to Wikipedia, “they often build a separate “winter burrow” for this purpose. This burrow is usually in a wooded or brushy area and is dug below the frost line and remains at a stable temperature well above freezing during the winter months. In most areas, groundhogs hibernate from October to March or April, but in more temperate areas, they may hibernate as little as three months. To survive the winter, they are at their maximum weight shortly before entering hibernation. When the groundhog enters hibernation, there is a drop in body temperature to as low as 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees C), heart rate falls to 4–10 beats per minute and breathing rate falls to one breath every six minutes. During hibernation, they experience periods of torpor and arousal. Hibernating woodchucks lose as much as half their body weight by February.” (UPDATE: I later checked other sources and most of them suggest that the respiration rate drops to two per minute when the groundhog is hibernating as compared with a normal rate of 16 breaths per minute.)

Perhaps this groundhog had recently emerged from his winter sleep and was looking for things to eat when I spotted it. Fortunately all kinds of things are starting to grow and hopefully he will have few problems in filling his stomach.

groundhog

groundhog

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Groundhog in a tree

Posted in animals, Nature, Photography, spring, wildlife, tagged , , , , on April 11, 2019| 12 Comments »

As I was exploring Accotink Bay Wildlife Refuge earlier this week, I spotted an unusual shape in a small tree. I moved a little closer and zoomed in with my camera and discovered that it was a fairly large animal. It was bigger than a squirrel, so my initial thought was that it was a raccoon or an opossum, but as I studied my viewfinder, I quickly rejected those possibilities.

What was the animal? When I uploaded the images to my computer, the facial features reminded me of a beaver, but the visible portions of the animal’s tail look to be hairy, so I eliminated both the beaver and the muskrat. Grasping at straws, I started looking at photos of porcupines, but they didn’t match at all what I was seeing in the photo. Finally I came across some photos of a Groundhog (Marmota monax) and I realized that I had finally found a match.

I guess that the name “groundhog” threw me off, because I expected a groundhog to be on the “ground,” not in a tree and I can’t imagine a “hog” climbing a tree. According to Wikipedia, groundhogs, also known as woodchucks, “occasionally climb trees when escaping predators or when they want to survey their surroundings.”

groundhog

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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