April 22 Earth Day Visitor

Happy Earth Day everyone. After classes at the Nature Center I went out to look around and saw a head poking up out of the prairie. It was a groundhog/woodchuck/whistlepig! It stood perfectly still as I moved a little closer and saw a few different tunnels near the hole it was sitting in. Groundhogs (Marmota monax) are in the marmot family, which includes similar sized species that thrive all across North America (for example, yellow-bellied marmots are widespread in the Rocky Mountains). The name woodchuck is a misinterpretation of the name "wuchak" which is a native word meaning "digger." Ground hogs will eat tree bark but are more likely to forage on grasses and forbs, and will also eat insects and bird eggs if the opportunities arise. They are true hibernators, meaning they sleep through the entire winter, and will put on a significant amount of weight in the fall before denning down. At the Nature Center we have a stone retention wall underneath a deck which provides them with plenty of habitat for shelter, plus there are at least three different tunnel networks on the grounds, perhaps serving three different groundhog pairs.