 It’s not easy being a wild animal around New York Harbor, especially when you’re a big mammal and the cold grip of winter has a hold of you. It’s a stressful and chilly time trying to stay warm and forage for food when only a meager amount can be found. Yesterday, with high temperatures only in the teens and wind chills below zero, I observed three very hungry white-tailed deer in my backyard feeding on the underbrush. Not much of a herd, probably just a few does working their way through a fragmented suburban forest following well-worn trails and seeking sustenance. They were browsing on twigs, buds, grasses, and leaves from deciduous plants, maybe even digging for a few nearby roots, practically anything they could find. The deer will eat now and digest later. Just like cows, deer are ruminants. They will digest their food while resting in a safe, secluded wooded place, away from predators, including coyotes, and winter winds, chewing a cud and processing it though a four-compartment stomach. Deer have evolved to postpone digesting food in order to eat all they can while food supplies are favorable. Thankfully, deer often do not have to worry about chilly temperatures. They have a dark-colored, thick and heavy coat of hair that is uniquely created to insulate the animal against the coldest temperatures, even when it’s below zero. The hairs are long, thick and hollow, which helps to trap warm air and act as insulation. The dark hair of the deer’s winter coat also helps to absorb more heat from the sun to help keep the body warm. Yet, winter can still be a stressful time for many deer. Food is in short supply by February and March, as all the best food supplies are often eaten by now. On average, deer need to consume about five pounds of food a day in the winter. If they do not have a decent supply of fat on their body, many deer will not outlive the season. Not all do, as around 15 to 20 percent of deer do not survive due to starvation.
In addition, it’s not easy trying to find food in a congested urban-suburban environment. Over 200,000 deer are accidentally killed each year on highways in the United States. Fortunately, the deer in my backyard appeared as if they were hungry, but not haggard. After a half-hour, they spotted me taking their picture. The white on the underside of their tail went up, showing a white flag as an alarm. Just like a reflex, the deer quickly sprinted away deeper into the woods probably to rest and digest what they ate on a cold winter’s day.
2 Comments
Tom Thorsen
2/16/2016 09:36:46 am
They now flourish throughout the winter eating European cool season grasses (lawns) along with the dwindling population of native plants. In the spring, budding young oaks will be mowed to the ground. Only the smallest and sickest deer will succumb to coyote, who prefer to eat carelessly placed McDonalds leftovers. It's not the fault of the deer that they thrive and cause local extinctions of native plants, but they are not suffering. At worst they are uncomfortable from the wind.
Joe Reynolds
2/16/2016 06:47:17 pm
Good to hear from you Tom! I hope all is swell. Thanks for the comment. I certainly can feel your pain about native plants. I’ve had probably well over $1,000 worth of native plants eaten by hungry White-tailed deer in the last several years on my property. But with all due respect, I view the loss of native plants a different way. What would you say is the approximate population of White-tailed deer in the New York metropolitan region? Maybe 10,000? How about 100,000, or maybe even as high as a million? I am just guessing, but whatever the real population number might be, it still dwarfs the total human population of around 15 million people. The real nemesis to native plants and healthy ecosystems are not hungry native wild animals, but the human species. This one species has destroyed and degraded more habitat, has put more pollution, often toxic pollution, into the air and water, and has totally replaced what was once vigorous biodiversity with monocrops, non-native species, and plenty of poorly planned development, in addition to tons of plastic and solid waste that often take decades if not centuries to decompose. Forgive me if I don’t blame deer or other wildlife species for trying to find a cheap and easy meal in an environment that is often polluted, fragmented, and full of fast moving vehicles trying to run them over. Instead of trying to control nature, we need to learn to live and work with nature to solve our problems. We need to do a better job of restoring habitat, increasing open spaces and wild places, and decreasing the amount of pollution in our environment in order to make life healthier and bring a better balance for all species (plants and animals) to live. It would also help if more people went vegan! Leave a Reply. |
STOP THE WILLIAMS FRACKED GAS PIPELINE THROUGH NY HARBOR! MY TOP 5 FAVORITE BOOKS ABOUT NY HARBOR 1. Field Guide to the Neighborhood Birds of New York City by Leslie Day 2.Heartbeats in the Muck by John Waldman 3. The Fisheries of Raritan Bay by Clyde L. MacKenzie Jr. 4. Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan by Phillip Lopate 5. The Bottom of the Harbor by Joseph Mitchell 
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