by Inger Giuffrida, executive director, WildCare Oklahoma
Spring is associated with birth and rebirth. Seeds grow, flowers bloom, grasses green, trees grow leaves, and wildlife have babies. During May, Mother’s Day is celebrated, and June brings Father’s Day. These occasions represent a time to honor and celebrate the work, commitment, dedication, and love that human parents provide their offspring. Wildlife parents also work hard, are fiercely dedicated to their young, and are singularly driven to protect and raise them to independence. In honor of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, this article will explore the roles that parents play in the wild.
Hardworking Moms
Most mammals are raised solely by their mothers. Although many mammals such as striped skunks, northern raccoons, and foxes are on the move within their territories, when they have babies, they establish dens. Logs, holes in trees, brush piles, small caves, and dense undergrowth provide ideal den sites because they are warm, dark, and quiet and provide protection from predators.
With unabated development of roads, buildings, and houses, natural habitats have been destroyed, fragmented, or polluted, forcing wildlife to live closer to humans. Mammal moms find their way into attics, under homes and buildings, and into sheds or abandoned buildings that provide safety and comfort. Access points are often areas of disrepair.
In many cases, people who find a den want the animals removed, but repairs made in early fall prevent animals from denning in locations that are perceived as inconvenient for humans. Trapping and relocating in spring are unforgivably cruel. The result is an intensely distressed mother that has been relocated away from her babies into an unfamiliar territory and orphaned babies that eventually starve to death.
Safe locations for babies are essential because skunk, raccoon, and fox mothers must leave the babies alone while they search for food. Although they are nocturnal, skunks, raccoons, and foxes are commonly seen during the day in spring and summer when they search for food. They need enough food for themselves to produce the milk required for their babies, and once babies are weaned, enough food for the growing youngsters. As single parents, these mothers are working extra hard.
Striped skunks, northern raccoons, and red and gray foxes are excellent mothers and will defend their young against predators. Any of these moms will move her entire litter to a new den site if she thinks a location has become unsafe. Skunks and raccoons have been recorded going into burning buildings and swimming through floodwater to save their babies.
Complex Family Systems
Some mammals are raised in complex family systems with both mom and dad, such as North American beavers. Beavers are monogamous, meaning the parents mate for life. Each year, they have as many as four kits. Babies stick around and help raise the babies born the next year. Destroying a beaver dam or trapping and relocating some members of the family are unnecessarily cruel because it means the destruction of three generations of beavers.
North American beavers are a keystone species because their dam-building activities create or enhance the freshwater habitats in which they live, including wetlands. Beaver-created habitats support a wide range of other animals, including insects, spiders, frogs, turtles, fish and other aquatic life, ducks, geese, herons, rails, bitterns, songbirds, owls, and otters.
Beaver families benefit people too. Where beavers live, water tables are maintained, and land is more resistant to drought and fire.
Another keystone species, prairie dogs, live in coteries or clans with one adult male, several females, and their offspring. All care for the young. Coteries are part of neighborhoods or wards, which are part of towns. Relationships between coteries in wards and within towns are complex and interdependent.
Relocating prairies dogs nearly always means death unless the coterie and ward structure is replicated in the new location. Like beaver habitats, prairie-dog towns are host to a wide range of other animals, including burrowing owls, snakes, toads, badgers, and black-footed ferrets.
Mom and Dad Work Together
With most species of birds, mom and dad work together to rear their youngsters, including geese, eagles, hawks, owls, falcons, many waterbirds, and songbirds. One of the most obvious in Oklahoma is the Mississippi kite. They are the small, gray hawks with distinctive high-pitched calls that fill Oklahoma skies in summer.
The kites migrate from Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina to breed in central and western Oklahoma, the panhandle of Texas, and the southernmost parts of the southeastern United States. They have their babies, rear them, and then leave in early fall to make it back to central South America for winter — with their babies, which are juveniles by then.
Both mom and dad kites are fiercely protective. They might dive-bomb people or pets that they perceive as threats to their babies. Although this can be scary, the behavior is the result of these birds being excellent parents — they are protecting their young. (Northern mockingbirds, although smaller, will also dive-bomb.) People can use umbrellas while walking near nests or avoid those areas for the brief time Mississippi kites are raising their offspring.
When baby birds fall out of nests, most mother and father birds will accept them back if people are kind enough to put them there. From March through August, baby raptors are commonly found on the ground before it’s time for them to fledge. That can result from poorly built nests, overcrowding in nests, or storm, winds, or excessive heat. In many cases, the birds can be renested and reunited with their parents, where they will get the best possible care. Great horned owls, among others, will even accept foster babies if they do not have a nest overfilled with their own babies.
Bird parents often work together to build nests, incubate eggs, find food, feed their young, teach them how to fly and other skills, and protect them from predators and other threats.
This year on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, take a moment to think about the wildlife parents all around us, working extra hard in an increasingly hostile environment to do their best for their babies.
