Woodchuck

Woodchucks prefer to eat fresh green vegetation. They eat a wide variety of wild plants, clover and alfalfa, and garden vegetables if they can get them. On rare occasions, they eat snails, insects, or young birds that they come upon by accident. Early in spring they eat bark and small branches.

Young woodchucks are born in Canada, mainly in May following a gestation, or pregnancy, period of 30 days. One litter, usually with four young, is produced per year. Woodchucks are blind and helpless at birth, about 10 cm in length and about 30 g in weight. At about 28 days old, their eyes are open, and they are covered with short hair. They are weaned, or have made the transition from mother’s milk to solid foods, when they start to emerge from the burrow at five to six weeks of age. Woodchucks grow rapidly. They weigh 570 g at eight weeks of age and become very fat for hibernation. Woodchucks have been known to live for 10 years, although the average life span is probably much less.

Classification:
	Kingdom:	Animalia
	Phylum:	Chordata
	Class:	Mammalia
	Order:	Rodentia
	Family:	Sciuridae
	Genus:	Marmota
	Species:	Marmota monax

Peregrine Falcon

Classification:
	Kingdom:	Animalia
	Phylum:	Chordata
	Class:	Aves
	Order:	Falconiformes
	Family:	Falconidae
	Genus:	Falco
	Species:	Falco peregrinus
Meaning of name: peregrinus "coming from foreign parts" or "wanderer."

Description:

The most reliable distinguishing feature of the peregrine is the head pattern that is very distinctive, even from a distance. The peregrine falcon is similar in appearance to more common Merlin, but is larger with slate blue upper parts, a white throat and cream-coloured under parts. Blackish-brown bars mark the sides, thighs, abdomen, underwings, and lower breast area. Male peregrines weigh an average of 611 grams and females 952 grams.

Remarks: Peregrines are capable of soaring to heights of 600m and are among the world's swiftest birds, flying at speeds of more than 200km/h. Peregrine falcons are expert hunters feeding on songbirds, shorebirds, waterfowl, seabirds and pigeons, all of which are caught in flight. The peregrine is anatomically specialized for hunting by direct pursuit in open areas. The prey often tries to escape by gaining altitude but the peregrine uses its speed to stay above the prey, and then dives, killing the prey by a direct blow of the closed fist.

In Alberta, The peregrine nest on ledges on steep cliff faces or high office towers and can be seen between May and September in downtown Calgary and Edmonton, preying on pigeons in nearby parks. The male will fly complex courtship flights for his mate, and by mid-May the female will lay an average of four eggs. Both adults help incubate the eggs which hatch in mid-June. The young birds are able to fly at about 35-40 days after hatching, but remain dependent on the adults for several weeks after they leave the nest. Peregrines rarely breed before three years of age, with the average life span being four to five years but individuals have been known to live much longer.

Peregrine Falcons, like virtually all birds of prey, now receive legal protection in most parts of North America. Peregrines have been bred in captivity for reintroduction to the wild. In Canada, over 700 peregrines have been produced at the Canadian Wildlife Service breeding facility at Wainwright, Alberta, and in facilities in Saskatchewan and Quebec.

Barred Owl

Classification:
	Kingdom:	Animalia
	Phylum:	Chordata
	Class:	Aves
	Order:	Strigiformes
	Family:	Strigidae
	Genus:	Strix
	Species:	Strix varia nycticorax

Description:

The barred owl is a large grey-brown owl with a large puffy round head and no ear tuffs (as there is in the great horned owl). The chest is barred across, and the belly barred lengthwise with white or pale buff. The back is spotted with white. It has large brown eyes, where most larger western owls have yellow eyes.

The hooting of the barred owl usually constists of 8 accented hoots, in 2 groups of 4 finishing in an "aw" sound. Some peaple say it sounds like it says: Who-are-you - Who-are-you-all!

Remarks:

Less common in Alberta then the more familiar great horned owl, the barred owl can be found as far north as Lesser Slave Lake and as far south as Calgary and Rocky Mountain House. The barred can be found in deep dark woods along rivers or lake shores and like most owls is nocturnal. The barred owl preys mostly on mice or voles that are active at night and located mostly by sound rather than sight.

The Western Plains Garter Snake

Classification:
	Kingdom:	Animalia
	Phylum:	Chordata
	Class:	Reptilia
	Order:	Squamata
	Family:	Colubridae
	Genus:	Thamnophis
	Species:	Thamnophis radix
	Subspecies:	Thamnophis radix haydeni

Description:

The western plains garter snake is a small slender snake between 500 and 1000 mm with some large females exceding 1000mm and is the largest of the three species of garter snakes in Alberta (the other two are the red-sided garter snake and the wandering garter snake). The body colour is greenish grey, light olive to brownish, with two rows of dark squarish spots forming a checkered pattern between the dorsal and lateral stripes. The dorsal stripe is orange-red to yellow, that fades posteriorly. The lateral stripes are normally yellowish or cream. The lips are light coloured, barred with black.

The fastest way of identification; if seen from above in the grass, (the way you are most likly to see a snake) is that if it appeares to be a dark or black snake with a red or orange stripe down the back, then it is the western plains garter snake.

Remarks:

The western plains garter snake can be found in grassy or brushy areas of southeast Alberta, mostly south of Cold Lake and east of Calgary. It can be active until mid-October on warm days, but will congregate at hibernacula when the weather cools. The hiberncula may be in the form of sink holes, mammal burrows or rock piles. This snake preys on small mammals worms and insects and will frequent ponds, streams, and marshes where it will take small fish and amphibians.

Mating may take place in the spring or fall and occures when the snakes gather at the hibernacula. Five to forty young are born alive from July onwards, and are about 180mm in total length.

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The Quagga

The Quagga was a subspecies of the Plains Zebra that went into extinction in the year 1883. This animal had the zebra stripes only on the front part of the body, which would fade and become wider in the middle of the body, and the hindquarter was brown (no stripes). The last wild quagga was probably shot in the late 1870s, and it was on 12th August 12, 1883, that the last specimen in captivity, a mare, of the died at the Artis Magistra Zoo in Amsterdam.

The American Avocet

Classification:
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Charadriiformes
Family:	Charadriidae
Genus:	Recurvirostra
Species:	Recurvirostra americana

Description:

A large black and white wader with a pinkish head and neck. It has a very slender black upturned bill, very long pale blue legs and the front toes are webbed. The call is a kleep, kleep, sound, repeated several times.

Remarks:

The American Avocet breeds in southern and central Alberta, east of the Rockies and south of Edmonton and Beaverhill Lake. In the nineteenth century specimens were found as far north as Lesser Slave Lake and Fort Chipewyan.

Avocets arrive in Alberta early in May, and gather in flocks of up to one hundred birds. Noisy courtship activities will take place in these loose colonies, and nests will be made by the end of the month. The nest is a depression in the ground usually on dried-out mud shores or islands of shallow lakes or sloughs. Several nesting pairs may be found very close together and two female may even share one nest, and will take turns in the incubation of the eggs. The eggs are dark olive to light brown spotted with dark brown and lavender. 3 to 5 eggs will be layed by each female so the nest may contain up to 8 to 10 eggs.