Dave! How the h*** are ya! Fancy meeting you here! Yes, your info
about this place is right. Snow was over 4 feet deep this winter but we had
tons of foxes around. Hawks are usually only seasonal... at least, I only
ever see them around the yard in the summer. My hubby will hopefully make
me some owl houses that can maybe attract something to live in our big
trees. We do have lynx in the general area but not right in town, that I
know of. Martins, weasels and minks are all over but again, I've never seen
them in the yard (my neighbor traps so that probably doesn't help matters).
We also have dogs running around (that I'm not too happy with) .
Paghat, thanks for the reply. We know this is most definitely due to a
population explosion. We've been seeing these rodents for about 3 years now
running around everywhere and we also found three piles of droppings today
so there's no mistake. We found today that they got the main stock of our
crabapple as well so we're not sure it will live. This will be it's third
season and it was doing so well! We have a one year old maple and newly
transplanted mountain ash that are still under the snow but we expect damage
to them as well. I'm now really concerned about the berry and fruit trees I
have coming in the spring to plant!
This fall, we will be using the wire mesh enclosures... I don't know what
else to do. I won't use poison for a number of reasons, mainly that I also
feed birds in my yard and don't want to harm them. Anything that reduces
the amount of grass to cut can be good so that's another place to look.
There are all kinds of predators around. I read on a website tonight that
the voles can go in 4 years cycles... maybe we're nearing the end.
With this winter being so cold and hard (down into the minus 40'sC this
season), we hoped it would naturally reduce the populations but we're not so
sure although we haven't actually seen any voles since December. In another
couple of weeks, I'll see the full extent of the damage and I'm sure I'll be
crying here when I find it!
Dave, our snow took a major beating this week too so we're down to about a
couple of feet left in most places. The temp is supposed to start
plummeting again tonight though (down to minus teens C for the weekend
again) so winter isn't quite done with us yet.
--
Tammie
Zone 2b-3a Far Northern Ontario
http://community.webshots.com/user/_tammie57

"Dave Fouchey" wrote in message
...
Paghat, where Tammie is the snow is on average 4 feet deep and it is
in an extremely rural (Think wilderness) area. She has a population of
Hawks, Owls and Foxes resident as well.

Tammie, you never mentioned do you have any Bobcats or Lynx in your
area? How about Pine Martins, Weasels, Minks?

Oh and I'm new here too Tammie!G

Dave Fouchey
Sterling Heights, MI
(Where the snow is finally GONE!)

On Tue, 25 Mar 2003 12:18:13 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:

In article , "bthache"
wrote:


This behavior of some rodents is usually caused by a population explosion
due to lack of predators, combined with winter food shortage. Population
explosions also occur in areas where there is heavy usage of
insecticides.
Many insect-eating predators also eat voles, & poisoning the insects
discourages predators & sets up an environment increasingly conducive to
rodents. Vole populations are also defined by how much grass seed is
available in its season. Reducing the amount of grass spring through
autumn reduces the number of voles desparate for something to eat in
winter. A good healthy amount of seeding grass actually induces voles to
go into estrus & reproduce like, well, like voles. But a lack of grasses
makes them go into sterility mode. There are other unknown factors that
cause temporary vole population explosions that do not last very long --
so a problem in one year might not be repeated for many years to come.
Though with lack of predators combined with lots of seeding grass, expect
the problem every winter, as they tend to strip bark only in winter
wherever there are no predators to catch them at it or to reduce their
numbers so that other food resources suffice. Voles often do it from
under
snow, burrowing right through the snow to feast on bark of young trees
without themselves being exposed, though most predators aren't fooled &
an
hear their movements in the snow; owls can even see their heat-signatures
through snow.

Reintroduction of predators is the only serious way to control the
problem
over a large area, meaning a greater respect & encouragement for snakes,
merlins, owls, skunks, possums, racoons, foxes -- even toads do great
harm
to rodent populations by eating unwise adolescents. Sometimes all it
takes
is a ground-level birdbath to get your garden on the "rounds" of a
possum,
who'll gobble down any night-foraging rodents while they're stopping by
for a drink of water. Even chickens keep down rodent populations, if you
can have "garden chickens" outside of pens, & housecats are really quite
good if outdoor oriented & not too unhealthily fat & spoiled by too much
storebought stuff that eventually makes it hard for them to pee & is no
favor to cats. Some smallish dogs like the Besenji & of course the rat
terrier also do away with rodents with wonderful dispatch without
themselves being too harmful to gardens. Besenjis have been known to
pursue prey right up into trees.

A garden or orchard that has become a bird sanctuary has fewer
small-rodent problems (though large rodents such as squirrels like some
of
the same conditions as the birds). Many orcharders do everything they can
to discourage birds & poison insects, so of course they end up with mice
or voles that debark the trees. Gardeners should be more welcoming of
birds of all kinds.

Rodents are themselves usually too smart for poisons, having a system of
testing new potential food resources & remembering if anyone got sick.
When it is successful, poisoning rodents also inevitably poisons the
predators who capture spaced-out sickly rodents first, & in the long run
this leads to happier healthier rodent populations without predators.

Lower trunks can be barriered with rodent-proof screens of metal or
plastic. The sundry paint-on or spray-on repellant products tend not to
work, because rodents will climb above the worst-tasting bits, or just
won't mind the bad taste if they're desparate enough to eat bark in the
first place. But some people swear by produts like rubberized Bitrex that
adheres to tree bark through an entire winter & makes it taste extremely
bitter. It can't work any better than eggwhite with scads of cayenne
pepper & painting the lower extremities of the trunks, except the
homemade
taste-destroyers need reapplication after every single rain.

Allegedly, baiting voles with sorghum or peanut butter or cooked rice,
mixed very liberally with vitamin D, stops them from reproducing & makes
them unhealthy because they start expelling calcium from their bodies at
a
great rate & it mucks up their hormone systems, yet is harmless to
predators. I've never read a serious study of whether that works though,
&
until I see such a study I'm assuming there's every chance this is a
"safe
organic alternative" SCAM with the same effect as those ultrasonic &
subsonic devices praised by the manufacturers & shown universally to have
no effect whatsoever in controlled studies.

For large territorial rodents like squirrels you can bait them away from
bark-eating behavior by providing them with better food -- they protect
their food resources from rival squirrels so populations do not explode.
But this doesn't work for mice that tend always to expand their
population
slightly beyond the amount of food available to sustain them, & providing
them tastier options than their last-choice of bark will just expand
their
numbers. Encouraging predators is really #1, followed by barriers. The
third option is traps. Since these have to be placed exactly along their
trails, traps are not terribly effective, or they ARE effective but only
if you have so damned many traps they're themselves in the way & a
nuisance. But voles leave little piles of droppings everywhere they like
to eat, so those would be your clues where to set traps.

One hopeful thing is that voles really don't eat bark of mature trees
unless starvation has forced them to extreme behavior. They're primarily
going to harm saplings. If you can keep them off a little tree until its
no longer just a tender-barked young thing, the matured tree will
thereafter be safe except in an unusually harsh starvation winter in the
wake of overpopulation.

The other thing to worry about is that it isn't rodents at all. There are
some kinds of beetles that live just underground & by night eat bark down
to the bones of the tree, but also eat the bark off roots. So you might
want to take a good look for vole-droppings (they leave lots of them
where
they eat) & be grateful if voles is all it is!

-paghat the ratgirl