The muskrats swim across the pond to gather food on the opposite shores. The rabbits browse among the plants around the pond. I wonder who ate the Spiderwort?
The muskrats Ondatra zibethicus who live on the pond are semi-aquatic rodents.
They eat mostly plant matter, but also smaller critters that they find. To eat, they have a thumb and four fingers -- with claws -- to grasp food. The back feet are larger and have five webbed fingers that help swimming in ponds, lakes, and rivers. They swim under water hunting for vegetation that they gnaw and chew with large incisor teeth located in front of their cheek. Or, they may sit on shore chewing terrestrial grasses.
Often we can see a muskrat swimming back and forth in the pond, harvesting plants and taking food home to the family. Muskrats Ondatra zibethica eat the roots, stems, leaves, and fruits of many water plants such as cattail, rushes, smartweed, duck potato, horsetail, sedges, and willow sprouts. They are strong swimmers due to their two long back feet and five webbed toes. For grasping and harvesting food, they have developed smaller front feet with four fingers with claws and a small thumb. By living near the pond, muskrats control plant growth, provide open spaces for new plants to grow, and make space for other animals to build their nests.
The pond has been
under a comforter of white snow. The snow layer insulates and protects the
critters tucked in among the rocks, mud, and dormant plants below water and
ice.
On a sunny day, we saw a large rabbit sitting in the snow near the pond. It created a depression in the snow among reeds and wildflower stems, and snuggled down there all day. At dusk, it was gone from that spot. The next day the sunshine was bright on the white snow. The rabbit was in the same spot again, and napped all day. I suspect it was a White-tailed Jackrabbit Lepus townsendii, actually a hare. Jackrabbits are nocturnal hunters and are known to take daylight naps in a shallow hole.
