Life and Death on the Beach

Whenever I feel like I'm up for a challenge, I head over to Presque Isle Park in search of dead gulls, as there are always plenty of them strewn across the shore. I find them difficult to photograph because, simply put, gulls aren't all that interesting to me, at least not visually. These days, I challenge myself to photograph them in different ways, and as I mentioned in the Square Gulls entry last month, I try to frame my compositions in a more abstract, ambiguous manner.

A few days ago, I took a trip to Presque Isle. I photographed one herring gull that had washed ashore near the breakwall, then headed to the other side of the island, where the beach is sandy. It's a popular spot for swimming and sunbathing; as a result, there isn't usually much to find, but I thought I'd take a look anyway.

The first thing I saw was a group of crows, picking at the sand a ways down the beach. As I approached, they all took off, but when I reached the spot where the crows had been, I didn't see much of interest. A second glance, however, revealed something dead, further up the dune. It was a porcupine! It had been there for quite some time; the corpse was little more than dried skin, quills, and bones.

 

The dessicated body rested on its back, and there was no sign of predation. Why a porcupine ended up on the beach is a little mysterious; it was a good distance from the water and didn't appear to have washed ashore. The molars were very worn, indicating that the animal was old when it expired. Had this elderly porcupine wandered to the beach to watch its last sunset, before dying? It's a nice theory, but probably not accurate.

As I was photographing the body, the crows bombarded me with their angry caws. They hadn't been that close to the porcupine, so what had they been eating?

Then I saw a maggot, and then another – and then dozens. The maggots were leaving the body, having eaten everything they could, and they had nowhere to go. They were rolling down the dune, faltering in the sand, collecting in pools of wriggling, desperate activity. The crows had been eating the maggots that, in turn, had eaten the porcupine. Amazing!

I took a few videos of the maggoty spectacle:

 

 

The crows weren't the only ones that had taken an interest in the maggots. Ants, too, had arrived at the scene:

Between the pools of maggots and what resembled an explosion of porcupine quills, the beach wasn't exactly safe for bare feet! After cutting the skull from the body, I made my exit – and watched the crows gleefully return to the beach and their maggot meal.

The porcupine's skull cleaned up beautifully. It was a bit tedious to work with, thanks to the quills, but the final result is a gleaming, perfect specimen:

Still Warm

This morning, a coyote was hit on M-28, fifteen miles east of Marquette. It lay sprawled in the center of the two-lane highway, head dangerously close to passing tires, teeth bared. A small puddle of blood had pooled on the pavement beneath its face. I moved the body off the road, carrying it by its legs, and was taken aback to find that it was still warm.

For a moment, I didn't take any photographs. I looked upon this coyote with wonder and pity, touched its scraggly summer fur, removed a dog tick from its ear. An hour earlier, this coyote had been a living, breathing entity, a predator of the northwoods, a hunter in the forest. Like untold numbers before it, this animal had met its end on the highway, and it had died with a look of terror and contempt in its eyes.

 

 

Psychologically, photographing this coyote was not easy. Despite the body being motionless, it still looked as if it could awaken, shake the whole ordeal off, and retreat back to the woods. Of course, it was dead; its snout was smashed, its ears bled, and its pupils were dilated, unseeing.

 

 

 

I photographed the coyote for nearly twenty minutes – an incredibly long period of time spent along the highway. Cars raced by, giving me a wide berth, their tires noisily hitting the rumble strip at the center of the road. There were spans of time, however, when there was no traffic, and it was blessedly quiet – just the coyote and myself, silent save for the singing of crickets and the distant calling of crows. At last, I moved the body even further off the road, into a grassy ditch, where I took my favorite photograph of the morning:

From the road, the coyote was invisible. All that remained was blood splatter; soon, that too will wash away.

 

See also: The Coyote and Tales of Coyote Trickery.

Fawn

On the first day of July, a fawn was hit 15 miles east of the M-28/US 41 junction. I photographed it on the pavement of the highway shoulder, where it fell, then moved the body off the road and into the grass, where I photographed it again.

 

 

Beetles on a Snake

I've got a sizable queue of photographs to share and topics to write about, but what Steph and I discovered yesterday evening deserves a quick post of its own. Near the bike trail we spotted a dead red-bellied snake (Storeria occipitomaculata) being eaten by several burying beetles (Nicrophorus sp.). I didn't have my camera on me, but I did have my iPhone, which can take a surprisingly decent video:

It's interesting to note the mites that are swarming the beetles (and the snake carcass), as well as the noises the beetles are making to one another.

Here's a closer look at a burying beetle, photographed in June when I was doing some blacklighting in the backyard. It, too, is covered in mites:

 

Burying beetles, like carrion beetles, are in the Silphidae family. They're extremely important insect scavengers and play a large role in carcass decomposition.

Old Snapping Turtle

Turtles are amazing animals. They've lived on this planet for millions and millions of years, and over that incredible span of time, they've remained relatively unchanged. Until very recently, they were perfectly adapted to their environment and well-armored against their few predators. Within the last century, however – a mere heartbeat in the evolutionary scale of things – humans have tipped the environment on its head with the advent of roads.

While many animals are quick or cautious enough to cross even highways without being struck, the same cannot be said for turtles. Even the smallest, most quiet of country lanes presents a deadly obstacle. All too often, these roads and highways cut through wetland, or run between a forest and a body of water. Turtles, many species of which will travel miles to lay their eggs, frequently find their way cut off by a constant stream of traffic. Unlike deer or coyotes, which can dart across a road in a matter of seconds, it takes a turtle far longer to cross – and oftentimes, they won't make it to the other side.

A few days ago, I was alerted to a big snapping turtle, hit about fifteen miles east of Marquette on the Sand River bridge. When I arrived at the scene, I was taken aback at just how incredibly large this turtle was. The largest snapping turtle I'd ever seen, it looked absolutely ancient, and it was both sad and humbling. How old was it? What had the area looked like when it first hatched? How fast had the cars traveled back then? Had M-28 been a proper highway, busy like it is today? How many times had this turtle crossed the road, without incident, before being struck?

 

The body had been there for several days. The long neck had burst open, swimming with maggots; the front of the carapace was shattered. Laying beside the turtle, amongst fragments of its shell, were the remains of its last meal – a crayfish.

How could I photograph something so sad, so grisly? For a while, all I could do was look at this creature with awe and pity. It had survived as a hatchling – a monumental feat for turtles – and had defied countless odds to become the hulking leviathan that I saw, stretched out before me, being feasted upon by maggots and beetles. I noted that the shadow its body cast resembled a dinosaur, and I found it strangely fitting.

I wondered how many generations of snapping turtles this individual had a hand in creating, and wondered, too, how many were still alive. I considered the flies that the body was feeding, and how they would become food for fish, which in turn would become food for snapping turtles.

If you are traveling and see a turtle attempting to cross the road, help it cross, if it is safe for you to do so. Hold the turtle by the back of its shell – or place it in a container or on a tarp – and carry it in the direction that it was headed. Helping turtles cross the road is an oftentimes tense experience, especially if you're assisting a snapping turtle, but it's also a great opportunity to learn and to help an ancient animal in need.

Here is a portrait of a young snapper that Steph and I helped this spring. It was migrating from the Chocolay River to a marshy area near Lake Superior, and would have had to cross two roads: