Quabbin Area Wildlife

Here are some of the animals found in the Quabbin today.

"My favorite part was the fishing pole. I liked the canoe."

3rd grade student

• Beavers are about 3 feet long
• They weigh 30 to 65 pounds
• They have orange tinted buck teeth
• Beavers eat plants
• They usually stay five or six years in one location
• They build a pond by making a dam with trees they cut down with their teeth

• The red fox weighs approximately 15 pounds
• It is a type of small dog that lives in a burrow
• It is red and has a white belly; the tip of its tail is white
• The red fox has a litter of four young
• It has excellent senses
• It eats mice, rabbits, birds, and insects
• The red fox lives in woodland and open country

• A raccoon is brown and black
• It lives and climbs in trees
• It has a black mask
• It eats fish and trash

• Red tailed hawks eat mice, rabbits, lizards, snakes, birds, insects, and frogs
• It lays 1 to 4 eggs
• Young birds feed themselves at 4 to 5 weeks old
• It lives in a twig nest high in a tree near wooded areas
• The red tailed hawk has a red, orange tail
• Its wingspan is more than 4 feet
• It weighs less than 3 lbs

• Deer have amazing hearing
• White tailed deer have brown eyes, white tail
• Deer live 7 years or more
• Bucks can reach 200 to 300 pounds
• Deer are good jumpers
• When a fawn is born the mother will lick him so she will recognize him later

• The loon’s scientific name is Gavia Immer
• Loons eat fish, crabs and some types of insects
• The loon lives in northern lakes and rivers
• Loons breed from Alaska to British Columbia and Eastern New England
• Their young have brown fur
• Loons are duck like, have black and white fur, white under parts, a dagger-like bill and they make a call that sounds like laughing

• Eastern coyotes average about 40 pounds in weight
• They are grizzled gray – brown in color
• They look a lot like a German shepherd
• Coyote's tails hang low to the ground
• They are strong swimmers, good jumpers

• Trout feed on insects, crustaceans, and smaller fish
• They are often raised in hatcheries and released in fishing water
• Brook trout live in water 50 degrees Fahrenheit or below
• They weigh 2 pounds and rarely go up to 10 pounds
• Rainbow trout weigh 2 to 5 pounds but they can reach 40 pounds
• They live in the eastern streams or lakes
• Lake trout need to be in cold water
• They live in the deep lakes in the north
• They weigh up 6 to pounds

• The Bald Eagles are the symbol of the United States of America
• It eats fish, snakes, and small birds
• Bald Eagles used to lay eggs with thin shells or no shells at all because of the DDT contamination
• The Bald Eagles nearly vanished from our area because of DDT
• Bald eagles work together to take of the eggs and chicks
• Their wingspan is about six feet long
• The Quabbin is a protected nesting area

• There are many moose in the Quabbin watershed
• Moose have brown fur and brownish whitish horns
• Sometimes they are friendly and sometimes they’re not
• A moose's legs are about three feet tall
• Moose cause more than six hundred car-accidents a year
• If a car hit a moose the moose would flip onto the car and hit the windshield