Claws, Wings & Others Things: Answers to Your Nature Questions

Marcus Schneck | By Marcus Schneck | The Patriot-News
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on March 03, 2013 at 10:11 PM, updated March 03, 2013 at 10:21 PM

This Week Outdoors: Eastern chipmunks are emerging from their burrows and looking for mates.

Dean Newhouse, of New Cumberland, was birding through the PPL Wetlands Natural Area on Brunner Island last Tuesday morning, when he came across the gruesome sight of a red fox that apparently got its head stuck between the rails of a wooden fence and died of suffocation or strangulation before it could free itself.

red fox 1.jpg View full size A red fox apparently got it head and neck stuck in a fence at PPL Wetlands Natural Area on Brunner Island and then, unable to free itself, died of strangulation or suffocation.  

"My first inclination upon seeing this is that someone had placed it there, and I suppose that's possible," he said. "But as I looked at it, that possibility didn't seem likely.

"His head seemed wedged in too tightly. It appeared to me that the fox had jumped up while chasing something - a bird I imagine - and got high enough to get his head over the top and then caught.

"And once caught, the fox didn't have the capacity to escape. A tragic accident for the fox.

"I didn't see any other harm to the fox (that would indicate it had died in some other manner and been wedged into the fence as a prank by someone), but then I didn't touch it or examine it that closely."

red fox 2.jpg View full size The body of the red fox dangles from the fence.  

Red fox employ a high-arching pounce style of hunting, leaping almost straight up and then arches forward to come down on prey with the front paws and snout.

The canine can jump more than six feet.

The evidence seems to support the suicide theory, and PPL could provide nothing further.

"The fox was removed from the fence, but we have no way of knowing how it came to be stuck there," said Ryan Hill, of PPL Corporate Communications.

The fence surrounds a dirt mound created by PPL as a nesting area for bank swallows that previously nested in mounds created by construction at Brunner Island.

It was erected to protect the birds from predators like the red fox.

"Clearly, the fence has proven its effectiveness," said Newhouse.

He used a Canon Powershot S5IS to make the photos.

Q: For many years I have noticed large groups of gulls in the shopping center parking lots in the Harrisburg area. They seem to appear in the winter months mostly. Are these sea gulls? If so, why are they so far inland? Also, what are they doing in the parking lots? All they seem to be doing is standing still unless disturbed and then they fly up and come back again.

A: Although the word "seagull" has been in use since the 16th century, modern birders prefer the word "gull" because not all gulls hang out by the sea.

The gulls mobbing the parking lots and fields of Central Pennsylvania have been gathering since the first few chillier days at the end of fall or start of winter last year. Many of them followed the major waterway of the region, the Susquehanna River, into the region, just as elsewhere in the state they followed rivers like the Delaware and Ohio.

They're here basically for food. If they could have found enough of it in their normal spring-through-fall haunts closer to the Chesapeake Bay or the coast, they wouldn't be here.

Once here, the gulls roam the area, looking for that food. They'll eat just about anything that is easy to find and swallow.

They gravitate to parking lots because they prefer the wide, open spaces, where they can spot predators and other threats at a distance, and share that guard duty with hundreds of other sets of eyes, and where they can spy on other gulls for an opportunity to steal something they've found.

Most of the gulls now in Central Pennsylvania are ring-billed and herring gulls. Other possibilities are the great black-backed gull, Bonaparte's gull and maybe an occasional Iceland gull.

Send your nature and wildlife questions to Marcus Schneck at You also can share your photos of wildlife and the outdoors with other readers by sending to schneck at the same email address.