Nature Notes: Whence the Whistlepig?

How much wood could a groundhog chuck if a groundhog could chuck wood? It’s not quite as much of a tongue twister when you substitute another name for the species. 

The groundhog, a.k.a. the woodchuck or whistlepig, is also called a marmot, a name rarely used in the United States, at least not in the eastern half of the country. Our Marmota monax is one of 15 marmot species around the globe. 

If it weren’t for Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil’s annual appearance on national TV, however, we on the South Fork might not know what a groundhog is. That’s because the South Fork was bereft of groundhogs until the early 1990s, when a few began to show up here in Sagaponack and the southern parts of the hamlets of Bridgehampton and Water Mill.

How did they finally get here? They are not considered great swimmers like their cousins and smaller look-alikes, muskrats, but they could have made it over the Shinnecock Bridge or its much older companion Long Island Rail Road Shinnecock bridge. But why so late? The L.I.R.R. bridge has been there for ages, built in 1892, 28 years before the canal with its locks was constructed. Another popular hypothesis is that nuisance trappers introduced the rodents, members of the squirrel family, to the South Fork after trapping them in Hampton Bays or points west.

Now, the woodchuck has practically taken over here, but I have yet to hear of one in Montauk. It would be quite a feat for an animal with very short legs and a home range of less than a hundred yards or so to get to that hamlet, and there are no fields on the Napeague isthmus to support it should it want to venture east of Amagansett.

On the other hand, how did such a sluggish, close-to-home family of marmot species manage to distribute itself throughout most of the world, taking to grasslands, and mountainous fields, such as in the American Rockies, Swiss Alps, and other Eurasian mountain ranges, as well as throughout the grassy steppes of Asia?

Among North American rodents, woodchucks are second in size only to beavers. They are true hibernators, thus the ongoing fame of Phil and Beauregard Lee to name just a few of the many celebrated groundhogs in the county. They don’t come out of their holes in the spring until they’re ready to and there is fresh food to eat. Other members of the squirrel family — say, our ubiquitous gray squirrel — don’t hibernate; they store food to get through the winter.

Woodchucks are occasionally seen along the Sunrise Highway and the Long Island Expressway, where they feed on the grasses adorning the medians and shoulders; a good many of them end up as road kills. Their dens are occasionally placed atop the sloping shoulders on Route 27 in pine barren country in Westhampton and Quogue and can be seen when driving by. They are perhaps most common along Route 48, or Sound Avenue, on the North Fork and to the west, where grassy fields are common. Across from the Cornell Cooperative Extension fields in western Riverhead there can be several burrows occupied by several woodchucks within the space of a few hundred yards.

Upstate they are, or were, the favorite targets of plinkers, chuckers, and varmint hunters, though they are not eaten and do little harm to crops and fodder. Most of the day they act like prairie dogs, standing up on their hind legs in front of their burrows surveying the countryside, “sitting ducks” to shooters. 

Like squirrels they are very good parents, keeping the young in the burrow most of the time until weaning. One rarely sees baby squirrels unless they fall from their nests or holes. The same holds true for woodchucks. The young are neither seen nor heard until they’re nearly full grown.

The most recent woodchuck that I became aware of is the full-grown one that has taken up residence under the new whaler’s shed behind the Sag Harbor Historical Society’s Annie Cooper Boyd House on Main Street. There isn’t much to forage on and the burrow is close to a wetland, but its occupant is comparatively safe there from dogs, gunners, and trappers. Jean Held, who is one of the stewards of that site, was amazed to find it and blamed herself a bit for not putting a wire fence around the base of the shed. But now that the woodchuck has found a home there, she has welcomed it. 

It may be the first woodchuck to settle in Sag Harbor, the home of Otter Pond, which has long been otter-less.

In a way, you have to love the groundhog. It’s an abiding creature that is happy to quietly take in its surroundings while chewing up greens and other vegetable parts. Lately, it has been joined by another member of the squirrel family long absent to the South Fork, the southern flying squirrel, a species that is capable of spanning the Shinnecock Canal in a long glide and hangs out in piney woods.

The South Fork is not doing so badly then when it comes to taking on new mammalian residents. While striped skunks may have disappeared and the status of its gray foxes is uncertain, we still get a beaver, mink, and otter now and then, and we have gained two members of the squirrel family and one from the dog family. Another one was observed and reported to me over the weekend. Let’s hope we will all be able to get along.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].