UP habitat work, snowy owls, the bog lemming and a new year

In this episode of the Wildtalk Podcast, we talk to Bill Scullon about all things habitat in the Upper Peninsula region of the state, fly away with a discussion about snowy owls, and we wrap up the episode with a chat about bog lemmings.      

Episode Hosts: Rachel Lincoln and Eric Hilliard
Producer/editor: Eric Hilliard

• All things habitat
  • Michigan birding trails
• All things feathers
  • Snowy owl
• All things fur
  • Southern bog lemming

Questions or comments about the show? Contact the DNR Wildlife Division at 517-284-9453 (WILD) or email dnr-wildlife@michigan.gov.

Transcript

Announcer:
The Michigan DNR Hunt Fish app is your digital connection to all things hunting and fishing in Michigan. Buy, store and display your hunting and fishing licenses. Check your points and chances for elk and bear. Apply for the draw and view drawing results. Access all the hunting and fishing regulations. View your Hunter safety certificate and report your harvest all from within the Michigan DNR Hunt Fish app. Just click the app banner at the top of the page for download instructions at michigan.gov/hunting. You know what that sound means? It's time for the Michigan DNR'S Wild Talk podcast. Welcome to the Wild Talk podcast where representatives from the DNR'S Wildlife Division chew the fat and shoot the scat about all things Habitat, brothers and fur. With insights, interviews and your questions answered on the air, you'll get a better picture of what's happening in the world of wildlife here in the great state of Michigan.

Rachel:
Welcome to the Wild Talk podcast. I'm your host Rachel Lincoln and here with me today to kick off the seventh season of the Wild Talk podcast is our show producer and dialogue extraordinaire. Eric Hillard.

Eric:
Happy new Year. Welcome to 2024.

Rachel:
It's amazing that we're in 2024. I am hoping that it starts off on a positive note for everyone. I like New Year's, so hopefully this is a good one. If you listen to our last episode, I'm a fan of the even numbers of this year, so 2024 sounds really good to me. It has a pleasing ring to it.

Eric:
Yeah, plus we're like 12 years past when the world was supposed to end now.

Rachel:
Look at us. Go us. Well, this should be a great episode. Our special guest, Bill Scullin will join us to shed some light on the wintery happenings for wildlife in the upper peninsula and then we'll take to the skies with one of Michigan's most majestic winter visitors, the snowy Owl. And for our final segment, we'll chat about the southern bog lemming and a small yet active critter this time of year. And of course, somewhere in the episode there'll be a chance to win one of the Wild Talk podcast camp mugs. As always, we are excited to bring you a fresh episode filled with wildlife facts and interesting critter bits. But before we dive into the podcast, let's hear a word from our forest.

Speaker 4:
Trees provide for the wellbeing of our state. That's why we work so hard to keep our forest healthy and abundant so wildlife has a home and so do people so that there's clean air and water for everyone. And so Michigan's economy can be as strong as the trees that support it because every branch of forestry ensures that future generations will always have a tree for life and forests for a lifetime. To learn how sustainable forestry benefits your life, visit michigan.gov/forests for a lifetime.

Rachel:
Today we are joined by Bill Scullin, the field operations manager of the Upper Peninsula region to chat about some of the awesome work going on this winter in the up. Thanks for joining us today, Bill.

Bill:
Pleasure to be here.

Rachel:
Well, what are some of the projects your region has been tackling this past quarter?

Bill:
They've been really busy. Everyone's really busy prior to the hunting seasons, trying to wrap up all their field work, all their field habitat projects and they've been working on just a wide variety of really cool stuff, traditional habitat projects, but there's some really neat projects people are doing. A couple examples out of Shingleton. They're working on a couple of large areas where they're restoring native grasses and native prairie components. One of them is an old prison site. The land reverted back to the state, so this is right on M 28, so they're restoring about 40 acres to native land species and they're trying to make it in, it's right on the highway, so it's going to be kind of a stopping area for people, a recreational area trail, maybe a dog walking area. Also, a hunting area as well for grassland species and so a wide variety of those kind of cool projects.
They have some that work doing on three different large 56 acre openings in the garden gems down in Garden Peninsula, doing that kind of work and rainy wildlife management area just north of Manistique. They restored an old historic boardwalk we had going out to a viewing platform on a river. They didn't restore it, they actually removed it because it was delinquent and they restored the path, put in geotextile fabric and then a gravel pathway there that's a little more accessible year round and a lot safer. That was a big project. Up in [inaudible 00:04:27], they had a lot of projects they were working on. Gems on the five-mile points up at tip of the [inaudible 00:04:31], it's a new area for us at the Sturgeon River Sloughs. It was a four-year project culmination. We restored a bridge, we had a bridge wash out in a flood in the spring and took a lot of engineering and a lot of expense and we restored a bridge so it allows us to access half of the managed area across the river, but it also restores a snowmobile trail, so that was a big project to get that completed.
They also have been experimenting with and part of the certain river slews is flooded impoundments and some of those impoundments are basically like a [inaudible 00:04:58] bog. They don't get a whole lot of heavy use from hunters because it's difficult to access wildlife, utilize them. So what they're doing is they're out there mulching some trails with a Fecon machine. Make it little more accessible for bird walking, bird watching, and possibly hunting as well. So that's kind of a cool project. Down in Escanaba, they've been working on Beck Lake projects with Colter Lubin for several years now. It's 145 acres of openings that he's restoring to native warm season grasses. It's a multi-year product. They've been working on getting that stuff done and open to the public. They had a prescribed bird in there this year. Cool thing that Colter's working on in Portage Marsh, which is right in downtown Escanaba.
It's a big flooded coastal wetland and they've been looking at, we've had a lot of problems with not being able to maintain a hemi marsh, which is a 50% open wetland marsh and emergent vegetation. So what we want to do is it's all cattails. It's basically choked off cattails. So they've contracted with a guy with a special piece of equipment that goes in there and they basically have roller chopped 60 acres of cattail to create small openings throughout this whole entire complex to make it more utilized by weapons, waterfall and other species, particularly muskrats in particular. So that's been a cool project. It's a multi-year project, but that's been something that really a big project to pull together. As you can imagine, the permitting that's required for doing that kind of work and the logistics of getting specialized equipment to do that kind of work.
It's a monumental task and culture's also been working on doing some mulching in the shaky lakes burns area. It's an oak pine barons, so he did 30 acres of Fecon work there, creating suitable habitat conditions and also a 225 acre burn this fall there as well. So there's been a lot of that kind of work in Marquette. They're working up at a train basin creating a birding trail. This is Caleb op working on this and Brian roll. It's a cool product that has a five-mile loop with 10 stops looking at a different forest and grassland species and wetland species because a train is a unique area where we have an impoundment with a hydrotic dam that's owned by a private company that we have some ownership next to for waterfall hunting and things of that nature, but also goes through a forested system and it also has a large grassland component adjacent that we manage.
So you have a wide variety of birding opportunities there and this is modeled have some of the work that Jane Rohr and Christie Sitar have done out of Newbury with some of the birding trail works they've done over there. So staff have been busy all over the up doing things and not just all the habitat work working up training. Rachel Leggett, our new technician in the Sioux, completed her CDL training this fall, so which is a cool adventure for her. And the reason that's important for us is that all of our technicians have CDLs. We use our equipment, we share equipment around the region so we don't have a plethora of equipment, heavy equipment to use, so it's important for us to be able to efficiently move it around the region and do these different kind of habitat products, whether it be a dump truck, a bulldozer, a backhoe or a Fecon machine, so they all really cooperate to get the work done.

Rachel:
If someone was interested in getting into the wildlife field and working on any of these awesome projects you just mentioned, would you recommend they pursue getting a CDL?

Bill:
It's not necessary. Many agencies at a field entry level, it's a good step to have certifications, having all kinds of those kind of field-based certifications, special skills, whether it be fire training, basic chainsaw safety, those kind of basic training things are good. CDL is a pretty heavy investment for someone to put into prior to getting a job. Most agencies, once you're there, they'll pay for that training and it's a six to $10,000 investment in training in weeks of time.

Rachel:
Bill, that sounds like a lot of really awesome projects that you're working on to increase both public hunting opportunities but also just wildlife viewing or general enjoyment of nature. So pretty awesome to hear the comprehensive list of projects you guys are working on.

Bill:
There was one big one, I kind of forgot. Across the region, we've been working on wild rice restoration for quite a few years now. This year we work routinely with [inaudible 00:08:57] Bay Indian community to help us secure seed from sources in Minnesota that we then transplant in multiple state land locations, state water bodies across the up this year they help us secure almost 4,000 pounds of seed that we planted like 10 different sites. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it's 10 bucks a pound and this is collected by someone in a canoe and then we go out and disperse it in canoes with tribal assistance across the region and the whole idea is to promote wetland habitat for waterfall as well as for individuals to collect wild rice. It's a very culturally important to the Ojibwe people as a food source. It's a really cool species to work with and we have a lot of cooperation with a lot of tribes on it. It's kind of a neat partnership project.

Rachel:
What does planting wild rice from a canoe look like? Do you use any type of special device?

Bill:
It's pretty rudimentary. The trick is it's collected in September. It's trucked usually overnight to us, kept wet the entire time. We put it in a water body that we have to store it for a day or two. You soak it in water, leave it at a lake basically, so it's in sacks and then you disperse it to whoever's taking it and they paddle out into a lake and they just broadcast the hand, throw it in the defined spot where you want to try and establish a bed and you're looking for the right depth level conditions and the right conditions within the lake to do it. We do a lot of work to try and figure that out, but yeah, it's like playing with insulation because it's real itchy and it always has lots of little worms and stuff in it, so it's smells bad, so it's as its downsides. The cool site is that next spring when you go back up and see it growing, the wildlife love it. It's really cool.

Rachel:
What an interesting hands-on project. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Bill:
It is until you tip the canoe, but yes.

Eric:
Maybe we should try to start some sort of a new tradition like at weddings where instead of throwing the dry rice, you throw the wet rice as they go out and jump into the car.

Bill:
They do recommend it so birds don't eat the dry rice.

Rachel:
Awesome. Well what's up next on the docket? Any big projects for the UP in the next quarter?

Bill:
This winter we're coming out of deer season, so we're getting a lot of feedback from the public about how deer season did or didn't go, and then we're amping up for spring planting season, spring habitat seasons. A lot of forest inventory work gets done in the wintertime, so staff are busy with that this winter. Looking at timber sales, looking at timber stands that are proposed. There's a lot of that kind of routine work behind the scenes, but that's how the state forests manage. That's really critical to how we do business and really at the big scale impact wildlife habitat is through our forest inventory work. It's kind of sight unseen but that's the meat and potatoes of what we do to impact wildlife habitat.

Rachel:
Pretty much the backbone of the work that we do a lot of times, especially during these seasons.

Bill:
And then we will have our normal field work surveys. We're going to do a wolf survey again this winter, so it'll involve all of our staff spending a lot of time out in the field looking for wolf tracks. That's in conjunction with a new camera trap survey we're doing with research at wolves. So there's a lot of time spent on a field looking at wildlife and the impacts of the winter on wildlife, measuring the snow, seeing how it's going to impact and what's going to come out of the spring.

Rachel:
So you can measure snow levels to get an idea of how that's going to impact wildlife this spring?

Bill:
Yeah, we have a program, we call it SNODAS and it's an automated weather system where we measure snow accumulation across the upper peninsula and this is based with Noah and we use automated weather stations and from that we can predict how many days we have of 12 inches or more snow accumulated, how it's going to impact deer. Similar to our old weather severity index we used to do. So if we have more than 90 days of we accumulated snow depth, it's going to impact deer severely. We had that last winter, we had over a hundred days. That's part of the reason why the deer season this year was pretty gloomy for a lot of people because a lot of deer succumbed last few winters, especially when we have late winter snow events like we had last year. So deer not only do they die in the wintertime throughout the winter, they die in the spring even after the snow melts. They're so nutritionally stressed even when they're dispersing out of the winter confined areas, they're dying on the landscape and that's what we had happened last winter in many areas.

Rachel:
That was very interesting. Thanks for sharing, bill. Have there been any additional impressive accomplishments that any of your team members have made this year?

Bill:
They all have done outstanding work in every individual's case. There's so many things to think of trying to bring, list them all out. We talked about Rachel getting a CDL and that's just one thing. Brian Roll recently promoted to be the large carnivore specialist. He was our biologist in Marquette. He's still going to be in Marquette, but he is not a large carnivore specialist, primarily responsible for wolves and cougars and things like that. So that's kind of a unique role for us to have that embedded in the up. There's a lot of work that's been going on. John DePuy has been working on the net River dam replacement. That saga is still ongoing since 2022. We stabilized the dam, now we're in the place of trying to permanently replace the dam and repair it.
We're working with an engineering firm on that, building a coalition of partners to bring together funding to accomplish that task. He's working on bat surveys. Ryan Mcg Gilbert's working on Turkey work. Everybody's working on something someplace. Dave Genta is working on all of our deer, everything deer in the up, which is kind of a monumental task, but we do appreciate all the work he does and keeping us up to date on what's happening with deer and being our central clearinghouse for deer management upper peninsula. So everyone's very busy and they're all doing their part.

Rachel:
Yes, certainly you do have an awesome team up there and congratulations to Brian for his new position as the large carnivore specialist. Thanks for mentioning that. That's a really cool role and I'm happy he's going to be moving into it. And congratulations to Rachel Leggett too for her CDL certification. Well thanks Bill. It's always a joy chatting with you and we appreciate you taking the time to tell us about your meaningful work that's been happening across the up.

Bill:
Well, we appreciate the opportunity to share the story of what we do in the up for the citizens of state of Michigan.

Rachel:
Well, don't fly away folks or you'll miss all things feathers coming up next.

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Rachel:
Each winter Michigan transforms into a haven for large feathered visitors from the north, including snowy owls, boreal owls, great gray owls in the northern hawk owl. Now surprisingly, these majestic owls choose to spend their winters in Michigan for its milder weather compared to the harsh conditions of the arctic tundra. During this snowy January episode, it only makes sense that we would be talking about the ghosts of winter, the snowy owl. Snowy owls are a visitor to Michigan most winters, however, it's not a native species to the state, which means it does not breed or reproduce here. It only visits occasionally. Now this is strictly a bird of open country as it almost is never spotted in trees and much prefers being in large open expanses. So it will sit directly on the ground or on rooftops, sometimes telephone poles or other outcroppings where it's in the open and it can see freely to find food.
And it thrives in our snowiest Michigan weathers because it is a species specifically adapted for the icy arctic tundra. Now we do occasionally get to see these birds in the wintertime in Michigan as this is their overwintering grounds where they come to feed and take refuge during the Arctic winters when food can be scarce, they're most often spotted by people during the daytime. They are a diurnal species and only hunt during the daytime for the most part, which is different from our native owl species, which are primarily nocturnal, which means they're only hunting at nighttime. Now because the Arctic has periods of the year with 24 hour daylight, these owls have adapted to hunting during the day and hunting in mostly that treeless tundra landscape. Now while they're in the Arctic, the snowy owl's primary food source are lemmings, which are a really small rodent, and we do have a species of lemmings that can be found here in Michigan, the southern bog lemming.
Now these lemmings are really similar in appearance to voles with really short nose and tail. However, when lemmings become scarce in the Arctic due to natural population changes that occur in small lemmings, the snowy owls will also prey on other small rodents and even some birds like ducks and other waterfowl. Owl breeding season does follow the patterns of lemming abundance and while lemmings are less abundant, the owls will tend to raise less young because of the cyclical nature of this predator prairie relationships, snowy owls tend to need to travel south when the lemmings are less abundant when their food source has become scarce. Now when the lemming population is low, we tend to see more owls move to Michigan in the wintertime and we call those years of high owl numbers eruptions as they don't necessarily occur every year, but during an eruption year, the snowy owls can travel great distances south to find food. They will end up in Michigan, but they even have been reported as far south as Florida and Texas, so they will travel to find good food sources.

Eric:
Do you think that if they were going to drink a beverage they would drink lemmingade?

Rachel:
I'd like to think so. Snowy owls are comparable in size to another large owl species that we have here, the great horned owl. Those snowy owls and great horned owls have the same wingspan of 55 inches. The snowy owl is the largest by weight in North America, 55 inches. Blew my mind though when I read that that's what their wingspan is because that's me. I think I'm 56 inches. That's a full-grown adult person for a wingspan, which is remarkable. And on top of having a wingspan that size, so many owls only weigh between three and six pounds.

Eric:
It's all those hollow bones.

Rachel:
It is the hollow bones. Yes, bird bones are hollow. Maintain a lightweight despite their sometimes pretty big size. Now the snowy owls feathers typically present as all white, and that makes its large yellow eyes really stand out in addition to a curved bluish black beak. Now, immature birds and females typically have black and brown bars, which mark all over their body and their wings. And females will use this salt and pepper type pattern to help them blend in with the snow and the rocks while they're sitting on their ground nests. However, the males as they age will lose those darker markings will become that striking completely white feather, which is spectacular to see always this winter. You'll want to look for snowy owls in open fields in near lake shores where they hunt for voles and other small critters. But if you do plan on viewing snowy owls, you want to make sure to do it carefully and respectfully.
So to ensure a positive experience for you as the bird watcher and your fellow bird watchers and the owls, we do have a few tips that we want to share with you. First, always give snowy owls space and really that goes beyond snowy owls. You want to give all wildlife space if you are watching it, so you can use binoculars or a burning scope to view them from a distance. And if you cause the owl to move or to flush, like if it is scared or disturbed and it leaves, that's how you know you've gotten too close. And so you'll need to leave that area to allow the bird to come back.
Another tip is to avoid luring owls with audio recording. So it can be really tempting to play owl calls to hear what calls back to you or what responds, but that can be very stressful to owls and other birds in the area. So it's best to maintain a safe distance and not use any kind of audio call to call in birds or see what calls back to you. And that goes the same with baiting. Leave live baiting to professionals using live bait to attract owls can be very dangerous and owls may associate people with food if you continuously feed them or try to bait them, and that will leave both the owls and humans in some really risky situations. So leave that to the professionals.

Eric:
So the fake owl calls, let's say that you successfully call in an owl because they think, oh, one of my other owl friends is over here. I'm going to go check them out, and then they see it's just a lousy human. That's probably like the owl equivalent of getting the, Hey, we've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty type calls.

Rachel:
It's a scammer. Yeah, and lastly, try not to gather in large groups when observing the bird because this can be really overwhelming and disturbing to an owl. So if you're following birding pages and you're seeing recommendations for locations on where snowy else have been observed, try to go when you think other people might not be viewing the bird or try to limit the amount of people who are going at one time or in one place just so that there's not this hoard of people watching this bird that could cause a disturbance. Follow those tips for an awesome time Winter bird watching this season. Stick around because all things fur is coming up next.

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Rachel:
Now, if you were tuned in to listen about the snowy owl, you may have been able to predict a little foreshadowing of the furry critter we're chatting about in this segment. A food source for many avian species like owl and an interesting little critter that scoots around under the snow this time of year. The southern bog lemming, these lemmings are closely related to voles, weighing in at a mere 20 to 50 grams, though the average size is 35 grams and measuring four to five inches in total length, so they're little critters. The fur on their back often ranges in colors from chestnut to dark brown and has a grizzled appearance. While the sides are like a silvery gray. They are rodents and their incisors are broad and longitudinally grooved, which is one of the distinguishing characteristics for how you know have a lemming and not a volt.

Eric:
What exactly is longitudinally grooved?

Rachel:
Let's just Google it. What did you do for work today? I looked at pictures of rat teeth. There's a groove that runs down the long side of the tooth.

Eric:
You'd probably have to get really close to see that groove. It's not something you'd be like, oh, look at that bog lemming over there. I can tell it's a bog lemming because of the grooves that are vertically and it's teeth.

Rachel:
Right. You're going to have to use a microscope and either have an extraordinarily patient lemming or it will have to be deceased in order to get that close to see its teeth, but.

Eric:
Maybe if you find an owl pellet and you dig it open and you find a little skull inside and the teeth have vertical grooves, you will know that that was a bog lemming that was most likely eaten by something like a snowy owl.

Rachel:
You will, and that is a great activity. Digging apart owl pellets to see what the bones that are inside is always interesting. There is also a northern bog lemming and I believe one of the distinguishing features is something to do with their teeth as well. So you could really do some investigating looking at those kinds of teeth. In an owl pellet, you'd be able to tell if you have a lemming or a shrew or a mouse or a vol because they all have very different teeth and you can see exactly what that owl was eating, which is pretty cool.

Eric:
You could become a rodent tooth expert simply by investigating owl pellets.

Rachel:
What a hobby.

Eric:
I collect spores, molds, and fungus. You probably have never seen Ghostbusters, so you probably didn't get the reference, right?

Rachel:
No.

Eric:
Egon.

Rachel:
I'm sure someone who is more educated than I would've laughed at that good joke. I'm sorry that I disappointed you.

Eric:
You took me at face value. You're just like, okay, yeah, I can see that.

Rachel:
If it's got anything to do with any kind of modern day pop culture movie reference over my head like a snow owl. Well, the tail of the southern bog lemming is short and barely longer than its hind foot, and they have four toes with one small nail covered thumb on the forefoot and five toes on the hind feet. Now these females have six mammae, which are, it's like a milk secreting organ that mammals have, which differentiates this species from its closest relative. The northern bog lemming, which has eight mammae. Non unsurprisingly, there is little known about the mating systems of southern bog lemmings, mostly because they spend all of their time underground, but we do know that they breed year round, especially when food is abundant. And we'll have two litters of three to five individuals that are birthed every year, and those young are born furloughs with no eyesight and their ears are closed, so not a lot of defense mechanisms for them as soon as they're birthed, but the claws are apparent, however, they grow really quickly because by the end of their first week they will be covered in fur and their ears will have opened and their eyesight is developing.

Eric:
And then they're ready to be eaten by snowy owls.

Rachel:
They are. So the life expectancy of lemmings is not very long. Most don't live beyond one year. In fact, most will die after three months, so they live fast and die. Young lemmings are active throughout the day and the night and are active throughout the entire year. They do not hibernate through the winter, but rather slow down their activity when temperatures drop below 19 degrees Fahrenheit. Now these lemmings occur in a wide variety of habitats, but as their common name suggests, they're often found in sphagnum bogs and low moist places, but it wouldn't be too uncommon to find them in grasslands or mixed forests. Other wetlands places with lots of vegetation to cover their trails and where they spend all of their time underground in moist soils.
They prefer areas with a thick mat of herbaceous and chubby vegetation, and the distribution of the southern bog lemming within their larger geographic range is pretty patchy, which may be in part due to competition with metal voles, which is like top competitor for resources is metal voles. These southern bog lemmings will travel around in very specific pathways. So we mentioned that they need a lot of herbaceous cover, and that's because they will burrow five to 11 inches deep underground as well as run on the surface, which are often located among roots of shrubs or beneath sphagnum moss. So right below the surface of the soil or across leaf litter and root level,

Eric:
Totally herbaceous dude.

Rachel:
That's the bog lemming slogan. A lemming runway is a distinct feature that can be identified as piles of grass. Clippings that are about three inches in length are left nearby on these pathways in addition to their droppings, which are a bright light green color. So that's the kinds of food sources that they eat. You see lots of lime greens and light green colors in bogs, and so it's natural that those are the small piles of scat you would find in these little tiny little pathways. I think you can picture what a deer trail looks like, but just on a much, much smaller scale,

Eric:
I feel like with the little lime green droppings, they should be called bog limings.

Rachel:
New nickname.

Eric:
I'm really just pulling some great ones out of here today. Starting 2024 off right.

Rachel:
These tiny bog dwellers create cozy round nests about five inches in diameter, made of dried leaves and grass, and some soft materials like fur that have two to four entrances for quick entries and escapes in the summertime. These nests are often placed on the ground amidst grassy vegetation or on top of S magnum hummocks. In the wintertime. They're commonly found three to five inches below the ground given their habitat type and their teeth shape. Lemons are mostly herbivorous in our eating herbaceous plants like leaves, clovers, grasses, and seeds. However, they will also eat small invertebrates such as slugs, snails, and beetles, both full-grown beetles and in their larval state. These lemmings are an extremely important piece of our ecosystems as they are a key pre species for raptors and other mammals such as owls, as we've mentioned, and foxes, coyotes and weasels.

Eric:
I mean, this is like nature's popcorn to carnivores it sounds like.

Rachel:
That's an excellent way to think about it. Yes, actually, while I was researching snowy owls, I read that they eat 1,600 lemmings a year. That's the average diet, which makes sense if you eat about three lemmings a day.

Eric:
A couple snowy owls could probably put a pretty good dent in a lemming population in an area.

Rachel:
They would be in high demand.

Eric:
That's a lot of lemmings to eat. If you're a snowy owl, when life gives you lemmings, conduct a lemming raid.

Rachel:
Ah yes, the oh so short life of the bog lemming.

Announcer:
Michigan.gov/dnr trails is your destination for trail maps, trail etiquette and trail closure information, trail information for biking, cross country skiing, horseback riding, hiking, off-road, vehicle riding, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, and even water trails for kayaking and canoeing are available. While you're there, remember to check out information about pet-friendly recreation track chairs and the Iron Bell Trail, all available at michigan.gov/dnr trails.

Rachel:
Now is your opportunity to win a Wild Talk podcast mug. As a thank you to our listeners, we'll be giving away a mug or two every episode our December mug winners are Becca Pouch and Don Cortas. Check your email as we'll be getting in touch with you soon. They answered the question, what is Michigan State Reptile? The answer is the painted turtle now to be entered into the drawing this month, test your wildlife knowledge and answer our quiz question. This month's question is, most frog and towed species in Michigan bury themselves deep below water and soil to prevent being frozen. However, three Michigan frog species have an antifreeze like substance in their bodies that allows them to survive the winter while buried only in shallow soil or leaf litter. What are the three species that have this adaptation? Email your name and answer to us at DNR-wildlife@michigan.gov to be entered for a chance to win a mug, be sure to include the subject line as mug me and submit your answer. By January 15th, we'll announce winners and the answer on next month's podcast, so be sure to listen in to see if you've won and for the next quiz question. Good luck everyone.

Announcer:
Michigan Conservation Officers are working hard to protect and keep the outdoors safe for current and future generations. If you witness a natural resources violation, you can call or text the report, all poaching hotline, 24 hours a day at 1-800292-7800, or fill out the complaint form available at michigan.gov/wrap. If you would like more information on becoming a conservation officer, click on become a CO at michigan.gov/conservationofficers.

Rachel:
Well, thanks for joining us on this January edition of The Wild Talk Podcast. Remember, if you have questions about wildlife or hunting, you can call 517-284-wild or email us at DNR-wildlife@michigan.gov. We'll see you back here in February.

Announcer:
This has been the Wild Talk Podcast, your monthly podcast airing the first of each month in offering insights into the world of wildlife across the state of Michigan. You can reach the Wildlife Division at 517-284-9453 or DNR-wildlife@michigan.gov.