(Image: Brendan McGarry)
In honor of Mother’s Day and moms of all types across Capitol Hill, here’s a look at a few critter mums you might find around the trees, plants, flowers, and ponds around the neighborhood inspired by Brendan McGarry’s CHS Pikes/Pines series.
Raccoon moms — A female raccoon making a nest in your crawlspace or attic is an entirely unwelcome discovery. However, keep in mind that a mother raccoon is a single parent of two to five kits. Males play no part in raising young and for raccoons it’s not a simple wean them and kick them out situation.Once a mother raccoon has gotten her babies to the point of being mobile, she has months of teaching ahead of her. Raccoons are smart, social animals, and in order for youngsters to be successful, they need to know how to find food and shelter. In the city, they also need to know how to avoid confrontations with people and their pets. This takes a lot of coaching, and mom doesn’t get any peace until the fall, when the litter are finally large and experienced enough to make it on their own.
Virginia Opossum — A lot of us have similar feelings toward opossums as raccoons; except that raccoons are far more cute. Both species dig through our trash, eat pet food outside, and can cause a general ruckus. Yet, baby opossums crawling on the back of a mother are one of the most adorable things we can see in the city.
A female Virginia opossum can give birth to around 30 young, but being a marsupial, not a placental mammal this isn’t as alarming as it sounds (still it’s a lot). Usually only a fraction of those young survive, with milk production limited to 13 teats. Even though they soon graduate from her marsupial pouch after a couple months, baby opossums can’t seem to get away from the idea of clinging to mom. It is not uncommon to see a mom opossum practically buried in babies, who won’t leave her until they’re around 5 months of age. What makes this even more astounding is that Virginia opossums have short lifespans, of only a year or two. Such matronly devotion, which takes up such a significant portion of their lives, makes them top mothers in my book.
A barred owl in Interlaken
Barred Owls — For those of you who run through our local parks, you may have had encounters with these intense owls. Barred Owls are fiercely territorial and when they have chicks, female birds can be very aggressive. This isn’t always the case and while I’ve not heard specific tales about owls on the the Hill, it’s not uncommon to hear about aggressive owls swooping down on folks enjoying a stroll or run in a local green space.
The thing is, these owls are just doing their best to be good parents. A female Barred Owl invests around 60 days into incubating and raising young before they fledge (most of this time the male is bringing her food). Afterwards, she and her mate spend the next several months raising them to the point that they can catch their own food, and move off into other territories nearby. Until they are seen off though, both mom and dad have their hands full with screeching, hungry fluff balls that will follow them around with endless pits’ of stomachs.
Mallard moms — Mallards and their kin lay lots of eggs, which is a clue that they suffer frequent mortalities. Don’t mistake this for poor parenting. Only mothers are caregivers, but they stay with their ducklings until they can fly, even though ducklings can feed themselves almost immediately. To protect ducklings, mothers will feign an injured wing to distract predators or call out boisterous warnings. But when you have 13 youngsters trailing you and poking around the undergrowth for food, a few get taken from the rear no matter how good you are.
(Image: Brendan McGarry)
Bumble Bees — Bumble bees are eusocial. Without getting deep into all the caveats and the genetics here’s the rub: eusocial insects live in groups that center around a queen, who is often the only reproductive member of the colony, and her offspring, all sisters, who work to support the colony. Males only do one thing: leave the nest to mate with a queen from a different colony and then die. This type of arrangement is actually the exception in the bee world, not, as our attention on honey bees seems to conclude, the rule. Out of the 600 or so native bees in Washington, only the handful of bumble bees are social.
Bumble bees don’t run things exactly like honey bees either. Instead of the hive living off honey all winter, bumbles start afresh every year. Simplistically it goes like this: every spring a queen who overwintered, wakes up and goes off to find a suitable nest site and stuffs it full of enough nectar and pollen to lay some eggs. These hatch into female workers who are smaller and once able, fly off to gather more nectar and pollen to raise more young while the queen focuses her energy on laying more eggs. New queens from this nest are raised up in the fall, go off and mate with a male, and then go to ground for the winter.
Dragonflies — Odonates are masters of both water and air. A dragonfly or damselfly (to help tell them apart: damselflies fold their wings and being small don’t fly as high or far) begins life in the water. Hatching from eggs laid by their mother inside or adjacent to aquatic vegetation, nymphs otherwise known as naiads, are underwater predators. Gobbling up mosquito larvae, tadpoles, and even small fish depending on their size, they are sit and wait predators that grab their prey with striking intensely, using an extendable jaw that is something that seems to have inspired the Alien franchise. Life as a winged adult depends on the species and can last a few weeks to around a year.
American Robins — Female robins do most of the incubating of up to three clutches of these pretty little eggs, cupped in a nest crafted of fine clay and grasses; a new one every year is built by both parents. Though they are happy to hole away in a shrub, it’s not uncommon for them to nest on a sheltered nook along the side of a building. Mother and father aggressively defend their nests, bravely attacking crows, cats, and sometimes humans to keep them away.
This, as it turns out, is a necessary task because only 40% of nestlings make it fledging. Young robins are easy picking even after they’ve left the nest, with only a further 25% making it to the fall. Three clutches might be a necessary thing to keep robins going, but thankfully their population has been on a slow increase and they are one of the most widespread birds in North America. Outside of absolute tundra and deepest of temperate rainforests, they are around, raising their young and being loud.
Eastern Cottontails: The breeding season for a cottontail is from around February to September. Female cottontails are polyestrus, which means they can have multiple litters in a year, in fact, up to seven ( but averaging more like three or four). In said litters, there can be close to twelve kits, though the average is more like five. So, even a moderately fertile mother could have 20 kits in a year. Adding to the mix is the fact that rabbits are reproductively mature after a couple months. Nearly 25% of the young each year are brought forth by juveniles only a few months old, (only a small percentage of them jump right into it though). This adds up quickly.
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