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Pennsylvania State Animal | White-tailed Deer

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Pennsylvania designated the white-tailed deer as the official state animal in 1959; native Americans and settlers relied on the white-tailed deer for buckskin and food.

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Department of Natural Resources - DNR 2017

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White-tailed Deer Facts for Kids - NatureMapping

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NatureMapping is a hands-on environmental science and education program linking kids, communities and professionals.

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Odocoileus virginianus

What do they look like?

White-tailed deer have different colors depending on the season and their location. Usually they have greyish fur in winter and reddish-brown fur in summer. They have white patches of fur on their face and lower legs. The tail is brownish-red above and white below. When startled the deer lift this tail as they bound away, making the white patch prominent. Males have antlers that begin growing in April or May with a layer of velvety fur on them. In August and September the antlers shed this velvety covering for the mating season. The antlers fall off in January and are re-grown the next year. With each year of age a male will grow larger antlers with more points.

Where do they live?

White-tailed deer are native to both the Nearctic and Neotropical regions. They inhabit most of southern Canada and all of the mainland United States except portions of the west central states to the California coast. Their range extends throughout Central America to Bolivia.

What kind of habitat do they need?

White-tailed deer are able to survive in a variety of land habitats, from the forests of northern Maine to the swamps of Florida. They also inhabit farmlands, brushy areas, and the cactus and thornbrush deserts of southern Texas and Mexico. White-tailed deer prefer forest edges that are close to farmlands, old fields, and brushland. These kinds of habitats are commonly created by humans by forest cutting and clearing and through agricultural practices. As a result white-tailed deer do well near human habitations.

How do they reproduce?

Most white-tailed deer mate in their second year, though some females occasionally mate as young as seven months. Mating occurs between October and December and females are pregnant for 6 and 1/2 months. In her first pregnancy, a female will usually only have one baby (fawn), but after that she may give birth to 2 or 3. Fawns are able to walk at birth. They are nursed several times a day until they are 8 weeks old, after which they begin to add vegetation to their diet. Fawns are weaned by 10 weeks old.

White-tailed females are very protective of their babies. When looking for food, females leave their offspring in a hiding place for about four hours at a time. While waiting for their mother to return, fawns lay flat on the ground with their necks outstretched, well camouflaged against the forest floor. Fawns begin to follow their mother on her foraging trips once they are about 4 weeks old and are fully ruminant at two months old. White-tailed deer fawns are nursed for 8 to 10 weeks before they are weaned. Young males leave their mother after one year but young females often stay with their mother for two years.

How long do they live?

Most white-tailed deer live about 2 to 3 years. Maximum life span in the wild is 20 years but few live past 10 years old.

How do they behave?

White-tailed deer are very nervous and shy; they wave their tails from side to side when they are startled and fleeing. They are extremely agile and may bound at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. White-tailed deer are also good swimmers and often enter large streams and lakes to escape predators or insects or to visit islands.

White-tailed deer often live in either matriarchal social groups or in male groups made up of a dominant male and occasionally first-year males (Smith, 1991). Females and their fawns may graze together in herds of up to hundreds of individuals. In September, males begin to establish dominance hierarchies so that they can mate. They will fight each other to have the right to mate with certain females. White-tailed deer are not territorial but do have well-defined home ranges.

How do they communicate with each other?

White-tailed deer have scent glands between the two parts of the hoof on all four feet, outside of each hind leg, and on the inside of each hind leg. Scent from these glands is used to communicate with other deer and secretions become especially strong during the mating season.

White-tailed deer produce several types of vocalizations such as grunts, wheezes, and bleats. These vocalizations, along with other sounds and postures, are used for communication (Smith, 1991). Injured deer utter a startlingly loud "blatt" or bawl. Whistles or snorts of disturbed white-tailed deer are the most commonly heard sounds.

What do they eat?

White-tailed deer feed on a variety of vegetation, depending on what is available in their habitat. In eastern forests, buds and twigs of certain trees and shrubs are eaten. In desert areas, certain cacti and other plants are eaten. Evergreen trees are eaten in the winter when other sources of food are not available. White-tailed deer feed mainly from before dawn until several hours after, and again from late afternoon until dusk.

What eats them and how do they avoid being eaten?

White-tailed deer have good eyesight and acute hearing, but depend mainly on their sense of smell to detect danger and their ability to run and bound quickly through dense vegetation to escape danger. White-tailed deer are preyed on by large predators such as humans, wolves, mountain lions, bears, jaguars, and coyotes.

What roles do they have in the ecosystem?

White-tailed deer can greatly influence the composition of plant communities through their grazing, especially where they are abundant. In severe winters white-tailed deer can be responsible for girdling and killing large numbers of trees. White-tailed deer are also important prey animals for a number of large predators.

Do they cause problems?

White-tailed deer will eat and destroy crops, vegetable gardens and fruit trees if they come into contact with them. When their numbers become too high, white-tailed deer can cause serious damage to forest vegetation because there are so many deer eating the plants. They are also involved in accidents with cars, often resulting in serious injury to the human occupants of the vehicles.

How do they interact with us?

White-tailed deer are commonly hunted for meat and sport. Early settlers and Native Americans also used deer hides to make buckskin leather. White-tailed heads are also commonly mounted on the walls of lodges and other places of outdoor recreation.

Are they endangered?

White-tailed deer are common throughout their habitats. Exact counts of their numbers have not been made, but there are probably somewhere between 8 and 15 million on this continent. Although they were in danger of extinction at the turn of they century due to overhunting, they have recently reached their highest numbers.

Contributors

Tanya Dewey (author, editor), Animal Diversity Web, (author).

References

Banfield, A.W.F. 1974. The Mammals of Canada. University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

Darymple, B.W. 1985. North American Big-Game Animals. Outdoor Life Books, New York.

Nowak, R.M. and J.L Paradiso. 1983. Walker's Mammals of the World. 4th edition. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

Geist, V. 1979. Hoofed mammals. In: Wild Animals of North America. National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.

"White-tail World.Com" (On-line). Accessed May, 2001 at http://www.kerrlake.com/deer/index.htm.

Smith, P. 1991. Odocoileus virginianus. Mammalian Species, 388: 1-13.

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BioKIDS - Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species, Odocoileus virginianus, white-tailed deer: INFORMATION

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Odocoileus virginianus White-tailed deer have different colors depending on the season and their location. Usually they have greyish fur in winter and reddish-brown fur in summer. They have white patches of fur on their face and lower legs. The tail is brownish-red above and white below.

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Michigan State Wildflower | Dwarf Lake Iris

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Michigan designated dwarf lake iris (Iris lacustris) as the official state wildflower in 1998; a unique and rare wildflower; listed as endangered.

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Web site of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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Department of Natural Resources - DNR 2017

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Michigan State Gem | Isle Royale Greenstone

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Michigan designated Isle Royale greenstone (chlorastrolite) as the official state gem in 1973; also called green starstone or turtle back in Michigan.

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beads gifts jewelry foundry keweenaw specialties copper art  greenstone facts

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Greenstone Facts : Keweenaw Gem & Gift, Michigan's Largest Supplier of Greenstone (Chlorastrolite)

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Keweenaw Gem & Gift : Greenstone Facts - Beads Gifts Jewelry Foundry Keweenaw Specialties Copper Art

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Michigan State Tree | Eastern White Pine

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Michigan designated the towering white pine (Pinus strobus) as official state tree in 1955; white pine was the focal point of Michigan's lumber industry.

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Michigan's State Tree: White Pine (Pinus strobus)

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13/52, photo by Wenström This week is Arbor Week, a week dedicated to celebrating and planting trees. One tree for Michiganders to celebrate is the eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus), which was adopted as our official State Tree by Act 7 on March 4, 1955.

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Official State Fossil of Michigan

The giant mastodon (Mammut americanum) was designated the official state fossil of Michigan in 2002. All State Fossils

This magnificent animal disappeared from North America about 10,000 years ago. One of the most complete mastodon skeletons ever found was discovered near Owosso, Michigan (it is displayed at the University of Michigan's Museum of Natural History). The longest and most intact trail of mastodon footprints ever uncovered are also in Michigan, near Ann Arbor (about 30 footprints).

The campaign to adopt the mastodon as Michigan's state fossil was led by David P. Thomas, Sr. (a geology instructor at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor). He obtained Bill 397 from Senator Thaddeus McCotter in 2000, held petition drives, attended Rock Club meetings, attended the Michigan State Hearings, and won support from teachers and students.

What is the difference between a mastodon and a mammoth?

The American mastadon is different from the woolly mammoth (also found in Michigan but in fewer numbers). Mastodons had straighter tusks and both the body and head of the mastodon is longer and squatter than the woolly mammoth (its back doesn't slope like a mammoth's).

Mastodons were about the size of Asiatic elephants of today, but their ears were smaller than modern elephants. They had thick body hair similar to a mammoth, but mastodon teeth suggest the diet of a browser, not a grazer (unlike modern elephants and mammoths). The mastodon also lacks the high, peaked knob on the head seen on the woolly mammoth. Mastodons are an older species, originating in Africa 35 million years ago and entering North America about 15 million years ago.

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The giant mastodon (Mammut americanum) was designated the official state fossil of Michigan in 2002. All State Fossils This magnificent animal disappeared from North America about 10,000 years ago. One of the most complete mastodon skeletons ever found was discovered near Owosso, Michigan (it is displayed at the University of Michigan's Museum of Natural History).

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Painted Turtle Facts for Kids - NatureMapping

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NatureMapping is a hands-on environmental science and education program linking kids, communities and professionals.

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BioKIDS - Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species, Chrysemys picta, Painted Turtle: INFORMATION

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BioKIDS - Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species

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Department of Natural Resources - DNR 2017

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BioKIDS - Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species, Salvelinus fontinalis, Aurora trout: INFORMATION

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BioKIDS - Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species

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These cool looking Petoskey stones, found on Great Lakes beaches, are actually fossilized ancient coral that lived 350 million years ago-before dinosaurs even-when Michigan was covered in a warm sea (yep, you'd have been treading water if you lived in Michigan then!).

Coral is a kind of flower-animal-the coral that eventually turned into Petoskey stones was red and had six-sided tentacles that sucked up plankton to feed itself. Other creatures like clams and trilobites also lived in this sea.

After the sea dried up, the coral hardened, or fossilized. About 2 million years later, huge sheets of ice called glaciers pushed through Northern Michigan and scattered the fossilized coral everywhere. It's been pretty much waiting in Lake Michigan or on the beach ever since-for rock hunters like you to discover!

Petoskey Stone Hunting 101

Where should I look?

Petoskey stones are abundant along the Lake Michigan coast from Leelanau County to Petoskey-the stone actually takes its name from the city of Petoskey.

When should I look?

You can find Petoskey stones most any time of year, but after a storm is an especially good time to look, since they're often washed onshore by big waves.

How do you identify a Petoskey stone?

Petoskey stones are gray and covered in little circles in a honeycomb pattern. If you look very closely at the circles you'll see that they actually have six sides, just like the coral's tentacles had when it was living under that ancient sea. Sometimes, if you look very closely, you can see flecks of red leftover from the red-colored coral.

Are Petoskey stones hard to find?

When they are dry, Petoskeys blend in with the other stones on the beach and their circle pattern is very faint. When the stones are wet, however, the circles pop out and are easier to see. One tip is to look for them in the shallows at the water's edge. If you think you've spotted a dry Petoskey, dip it in the water to see if it has circles.

Can I polish my Petoskey stone?

Yes, by hand-unless you really know what you are doing, the stones are too soft to be put into a rock tumbler. Rub your stone with 220-, 400- and 600-grit sandpaper, in that order. During the sanding process rinse the stone often in clean water, then dry it. After your stone is smooth you can rub it with mineral oil to make the circles standout-or just keep it in a glass jar filled with water.

Learn how to polish a Petoskey stone in this MyNorth Media video! Click here for instructions.

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More for Rock Hunters:

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Kids Up North: Go Petoskey Stone Hunting! - MyNorth.com

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These cool looking Petoskey stones, found on Great Lakes beaches, are actually fossilized ancient coral that lived 350 million years ago-before dinosaurs even-when Michigan was covered in a warm sea (yep, you'd have been treading water if you lived in Michigan then!).

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it is found in both the upper and lower peninsulas, was mapped on over one million acres, it supports one of our chief industries (wood products), is one of the original soil series in the State (first mapped in 1927), and it is a beautiful, colorful soil that makes a fine display.

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Official State Bird of Michigan

Michigan designated "robin redbreast" (American robin) as the official state bird in 1931 after an election held by the Michigan Audubon Society. All state birds

The legislation noted that "the robin redbreast is the best known and best loved of all the birds in the state of Michigan." The American robin (Turdus migratorius) is also the state bird of Connecticut and Wisconsin.

Robin Facts

Robins were named by early settlers after the familiar robin red-breast of Europe (a bird with similar markings that is not closely related to the American Robin).

The most widespread thrush in North America (because of its adaptation to human-modified habitats), robins are a familiar backyard bird often observed pulling up earthworms on suburban lawns.

The American robin has many vocalizations - rich songs composed of long phrases and "whinny" and "tut" calls. The female is muted in color compared to the male.

Children Lobby for New State Bird Symbol

The robin's claim to the title of official state bird of Michigan has been challenged from a group of 3rd, 4th, & 5th graders. They arrived at the state capital in 2003 to lobby for the Kirtland's Warbler as the state bird of Michigan. Some of their reasons: the Kirtland's Warbler nests exclusively in Michigan, it is the rarest warbler in North America, and has recovered from near-extinction (expected to be removed from endangered species list soon) thanks to conservation efforts to preserve their only habitat; Michigan's Jack Pine Barrens.

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Michigan designated "robin redbreast" (American robin) as the official state bird in 1931 after an election held by the Michigan Audubon Society. All state birds The legislation noted that "the robin redbreast is the best known and best loved of all the birds in the state of Michigan."

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A to Z Kids Stuff | Michigan Facts For Children

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Resources and activities for school age children on the state of Michigan.

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Michigan Kids - Facts on Michigan's history, state symbols, population, geography, economy and more.

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Pyrus coronaria

The Apple Blossom was named the Michigan state flower in 1897. The choice is fitting given the state's long ties to the fruit. Michigan ranks third in the country in apple production, just behind Washington and New York. While Michigan's orchards produce many varieties of apples, lawmakers singled out the flower of the pyrus coronaria, or crabapple, for the distinction of becoming the Michigan state flower.

Each April and May, crabapple trees burst out in delicate white and pink blossoms. The clustered flowers not only add color to otherwise green apple orchards, but also give off a valuable honeysuckle scent. The sweet fragrance attracts bees to orchards where they do the important job of pollinating. Apple growers often plant crabapple trees amongst their other apple varieties just for this purpose. After Apple Blossoms are pollinated, fruits begin to grow. The crabapple tree's fruit reaches their maturity by late summer. The fruit of the pyrus coronaria is largely ornamental or used only in preservatives and jellies.

Apple orchards flourish off the shores of Lake Michigan where they benefit from the lake-influenced weather. Near Grand Rapids, flowers from the apple tree signal the arrival of the annual Blossomtime Festival. The event marks the arrival of Apple Blossoms as well as the harvest of the region's grapes, melons, peaches, tomatoes and tart cherries.

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Michigan State Flower - The Apple Blossom - ProFlowers Blog

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Pyrus coronaria The Apple Blossom was named the Michigan state flower in 1897. The choice is fitting given the state's long ties to the fruit. Michigan ranks third in the country in apple production, just behind Washington and New York.