Marmots

Our brave little resident marmot made it safely through another winter and was seen poking around under the bird feeder this morning scrounging sunflower seeds. He and his mate are gutsy little creatures. He often sits within a few feet of the cat, Phoenix (who is a hunter extraordinaire) or the dog, Spirit (who has also been known to catch mice and gophers) calmly eating seeds. If either makes a move to get closer, the marmots manage to disappear in a twinkling!

Two summers ago he was coming right up on our deck and when Spirit would chase him, he dived into the huge juniper bush next to the deck. It took me quite a while to realize that there were two of them and even longer to figure out why they were constantly sneaking around on the deck.

I had a brand new 15 pound bag of bird seed parked at one corner of the deck more or less out of (my) sight. We kept the bird feeder filled up regularly and the sparrows, chickadees, finches, nuthatches and downy woodpeckers visited it frequently. Once the old bag of oiled sunflower seeds was used up, I went to use the new bag, but found most of the seed in the bag was gone! The sneaky little marmots had bitten a loonie sized hole on one side of the bag and kept coming back every day to help themselves until the bag was nearly empty!

This pair of marmots, which live in the ravine next to our house, contribute to my garden every year. They are responsible for all of the sunflowers that grow there!

The marmots gather up sunflower seeds in their mouths (which they find on the ground under the bird feeders, or in carelessly left bags on the deck... LOL!) and then hide them in various locations, mostly in my flower beds. They dig some of them out later to eat, but mostly they forget about them since there is always a fresh supply of seeds falling off the feeder to keep them fat. Consequently the stashed sunflower seeds then sprout and I end up with several dozen sunflowers growing gracefully, but haphazardly in my flower beds.

I usually move some of them to pots to enjoy on the deck and some to better locations in the flower beds, but most of them I leave be, to grow wherever they have sprouted. Then in the fall once the sunflowers have produced seeds, the chickadees and other seed eaters enjoy the fruits of the marmots' labors. My only contribution is some water on a regular basis and allowing them their space to grow and mature into seeds. :)