When is fisher cat mating season

Fishers have a low annual reproductive capacity, and reproductive rates may fluctuate widely from year to year. After a year, kits will have developed their own home ranges. Fishers are estimated to live up to 10 years.

Post implantation gestation is approximately 30 to 60 days while pre implantation averages about days. Females, therefore, spend the vast majority of their life in some stage of pregnancy. Contrary to its name, the fisher does not typically eat fish. Its feeding behavior is best described as opportunistic; it feeds on whatever is seasonally abundant and readily available.

Primarily carnivorous, it will eat a variety of small to medium sized mammals, including mice, moles, voles, shrews, squirrels, muskrats, woodchucks, snowshoe hares, and occasionally even fawns. The fisher has also been known to consume a variety of birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects.

Apples, cherries, raspberries, beechnuts, and acorns are also significant. The fisher's appetite for porcupine is unique. There is much speculation as to how a fisher accomplishes this prickly meal, but as evidence suggests porcupines are most certainly a routine part of their diet.

A fisher likely crowds the porcupine to the outer limits of a tree's branches, forcing it to fall. The dazed and probably injured porcupine is then more susceptible to an attack on the ground. Repetitive attacks to the unquilled face also help. Either way, this is proof of the fisher's amazing agility aloft in the trees or on the ground.

The fisher is active both day and night, with heightened activity occurring in the early morning and late evening. It will travel long distances during short periods in search of food. One radio-collared male, for example, traveled over 60 miles in a three-day period. While wandering, a fisher will periodically stop to investigate possible food sources such as porcupine dens. In areas where prey is more abundant and predictable, such as in dense coniferous forest, it often zigzags back and forth, thereby flushing possible prey from its hiding cover.

They have also been seen to eat white-tailed deer , though they are most likely scavenging a deer carcass. Fishers and American martens are the only medium-sized predators agile in trees that also have the ability to stretch themselves to look for prey in holes in the ground, hollow trees and other small areas.

Fishers are hunt alone, and look for prey that is their own size or smaller, although they are capable of taking on prey larger than themselves.

Young fishers fall prey to hawks , red foxes , lynx and bobcats. Adult fishers are generally safe from predation. Fishers are important predators in their ecosystems. They are often in competition for food with foxes , bobcats , lynx , coyotes , wolverines , American martens and weasels.

Fishers rarely get diseases. In recent years fisher populations in some areas, particularly southern Ontario and New York, have been recovering. In these areas they may be becoming used to humans and venturing into suburban areas. There have been many reports of fisher attacks on domestic animals and even children. It is important to recognize that fishers are simply trying to find food and protect themselves.

It is important to not allow them access to garbage, pet foods, pets, and domestic fowl. When startled, fishers may react aggressively to what they see as a threat. Diseased animals may react unpredictably. Fishers are trapped and killed for their pelts. Trapping, in the past, had a large effect on fisher populations, but the problem is not as severe now. Fishers hunt porcupines , and can effectively control porcupine populations porcupines are known to damage timber crops by eating the bark and killing trees.

Logging of forests greatly affects fishers and fisher populations by destroying their preferred habitat--continuous or nearly continuous coniferous forests. Zoos have had a hard time breeding fishers in captivity, but there has been some success. Because there are many thriving and healthy fisher populations, there has been little desire to develop fisher breeding programs in captivity.

In some areas of North America, such as Michigan, Ontario, New York, and some areas of New England, fisher populations seem to have rebounded in recent years. Fisher populations in the southern Sierra Nevada have been said to need protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Fishers are generally thought of as shy and rarely observed. This may be changing in parts of their range as populations re-expand and become used to human presence. Macdonald, David. Facts on File Publications, NY.

Reproduction: Mating occurs in March and April and females give birth to a litter of average is 3 kits born nearly a year later.

Females usually give birth in a tree cavity feet off the ground. Habitat Use: Fishers are solitary except during the mating season. Fisher travel along ridges, crossing stream valleys to reach the next ridge.

They range widely in search of food, traveling up to 60 miles on some hunting forays. They regularly travel over square miles, although this home range is not defended. Fisher are active throughout the year, mostly at night, sunrise, and sunset. To learn more, read the story, The Elusive Fisher.