A beaver dam bipass

The Sierra Nevada beavers are now using PVC. It's a labor-saving innovation.

Okay, I'm pulling your leg.

I took this photo yesterday in Plumas County, where a homesteading beaver tempted fate by damming the creek next to the local landowner's house.

The "environmental logger" who lives across the road learned of his neighbor's resentment, and advised him to use PVC to trick the beaver.

The PVC device is a called the Clemson beaver pond leveler, but its really just a bipass of sorts.

According to the beaver specialists, "Beavers repair dams in response to the sight, sound, and feel of running water. The Clemson leveler transports water through a dam in such a way that beavers cannot sense it and as a result, beavers don't attempt to plug the leveler."

It doesn't work all the time, but so far it has given this beaver a stay of execution.

Skinny cat nails plump bunny

The young bobcat caught the brush rabbit on the evening of June 11.

I couldn't see the rabbit when I scoped the pictures on the camera's LCD the other day, but there was no mistaking it as a rare event when I saw it on the computer screen this evening.

I think the dead rabbit is the same one the cameras photographed between May 31 and the morning of June 9. (I have three cameras on this trail.)

No bunny however was photographed after June 11 and until I checked the cameras on June 30.

The rabbit had the habit of loafing on the trail. I got multiple images of it.



This trail seems to be on the cat's regular beat.



Between June 10 and June 23 the cameras photographed the same cat on 5 occasions.

Look at the it's right foreleg and you will recognize a distinctive broken band of dark fur.



It's the same in all photos, except the one with the dangling rabbit.



My guess is that the hunter is the same skinny bobcat seen in the other pictures -- a young adult probably from last year's litter.

Bitter cherry sauce

I was on the trail with Fred the other morning when I caught a fleeting glimpse of a small creature eyeing me through the thimbleberry bushes.

As it humped down the trail its black-streaked tail gave it away -- gray fox. Not a surprise.

Fred of course was oblivious until he stumbled into the fox's scent trail -- apparently it had been enjoying the company of a pile of horse pucky.

Fred took off like a bloodhound.

The chase was a short-lived phenomenon. Reynard abandoned the trail about 50 yards away and disappeared into the underbrush.

Fred returned with gleaming smile and hanging tongue.

It was then that I noticed I was standing in a small thicket of wild cherry trees -- bitter cherries, Prunus emarginata, to be exact.

Laden with fruit.

I hooked a limb with my stick, and was soon lost in a reverie of browsing -- the yellow and red fruit were highly edible, and Fred whined for me to share the fare.

Yes, Fred eats sour cherries. It's a bit odd.

Well, let me just say that I developed a powerful craving for bitter cherry sauce on vanilla ice cream.

The next day I picked a half gallon of the seductive fruits, and the redhead pitted the batch and cooked it into bitter cherry syrup.

It's a good excuse to eat ice cream and completely nullifies the effects of all that cholesterol.

The tail wasn't enough

...but was the rest of the meal too much?

I wonder.

When you find half an alligator lizard on the trail, you know the old tail autotomy trick didn't work.

Did the catcher of the luckless lizard lose its appetite or did something scary interrupt its meal?

Stinkarella and skunklets

Stinkarella took the kids for a stroll three nights ago (June 14), and walked right past the camera on a jeep trail.

The site is in the chaparral a couple hundred yards from my house -- the same place where something nailed a striped skunk over a month ago, and where Fred got his lessons in rattlesnake avoidance.

I am always pleased to get pictures of spotted skunks, especially when it's a family like this.

I get spotted skunk images here quite often, especially in mixed conifer-oak woodland, but mothers with young in tow can be seen only a few weeks during the year.

Last year I recorded a mother with skunklets on June 25th.

On a related topic, I have to confess that the three cams at "el paso de las pumas" were a bust.

I pulled them this afternoon, and I'm taking them to greener pastures in Sierra County this weekend.

The redhead and I'll be attending a reunion of San Francisco State University biology graduates.

We're meeting at the SF State Field Campus, where I'm supposed to demonstrate my camera trapping obsession.

I'll set 5 cameras in preparation for the Camera Trapping Workshop there next month.

The reunion should prove amusing. Most of us are geezers, and we haven't seen each other for decades.

Anyway, I am back in commission, so I'll be posting more often than during the past month.

Fred meets some reptiles

I couldn't help bringing Fred's attention to a foothill alligator lizard  last weekend. 

The lizard was wall climbing when I discovered it.

Fred's initial caution gave way to lusty barking, play bows, and total fixation. 

It was the same old routine he directs to sweeping brooms and digging shovels with occasional sideways glances in response to my comments.

"Be careful, Freddy Boy. That thing will grab your snout like a snub-nose pliers."

I felt a little bad for the lizard. It tried to drop to the ground, but changed its mind and just hung there by a few claws looking up at its tormentor with a jaundiced eye.



Finally the lizard dropped to the ground, paused for a long overdue bowel evacuation, and made a slow motion exit behind a downspout.

A half hour of quality dog entertainment ended.

A couple hours later, neighbor Richard called. Could I release a rattlesnake he just caught next to his house? 

I agreed to deliver it to a safe haven down the hill in the chaparral. After dinner -- when the weather had cooled off.



Then I started to wonder:  Was the dog-lizard encounter a bad idea? This is rattlesnake country. Had I unwittingly emboldened the dog to reptiles in general?

If Fred took the same liberties with a coiled rattlesnake that he did with the lizard -- well, Fred would be dead.

But Fred's virtues are that he is not overly bold, and he is very sensitive to discipline.

So the snake release became an object lesson.

Mouse traps on the garden's drip system taught him that "look out!" and "be careful!" means he can get hurt. 

When the rattler started to buzz in the bucket he backed away before I could say those words.

Then I dumped the snake out of the bucket. 

Fred started to approach but heard my bellowing "Noooo!"

He shied away immediately, and watched as I prodded the snake to make its exit.

The next afternoon Richard called again and asked where I had released the rattlesnake. He had just caught another rattlesnake under the hummingbird feeder. It was the same size (about 30") and a dead ringer for yesterday's snake.

I found it hard to believe it was the same snake, and suggested that maybe this snake had followed the first snake's odor trail.

Whatever the case, I would take this one further down the jeep trail.

It was an opportunity to test Fred's rattlesnake training.

Richard and Julia colored this snake's rattle with a felt marker pen.

Down the trail I gave my warnings -- "Look out! Be careful!"

As I dumped the snake out of the bucket Fred watched intently from a distance of several yards.

No play bows, no barking.

When the snake was gone, I rubbed my dog's ears.

"You're a good boy, Fred."

Sneaky jays and nervous titmice

It's sneaky-jay time of year. 

Cavity nesters are busy feeding their young and sneaky jays are on the lookout.

The ecological theatre is in the potting shed where the oak titmice have nestlings in the box. 

When I hear titmice sphishing, I walk to the shed and look up into the live oaks, and there they are dancing about in a frenzy of alarm.

Seeing the jay is a different matter.   

Whatever the jay -- Steller or scrub -- it tries to be cryptic. It hardly moves. In fact, it almost looks sleepy. 

But I have seen this little drama play out many times, and I know the jay is searching for helpless fledglings.   

Soon the fledglings will be out and about, and for a few days they'll be highly vulnerable. 

That's when sneaky jay will make its move as it did last year. 

I couldn't see the fledglings because they were motionless. 

But the jay pounced when a fledgling moved, and it flew off a little heavily with the squealing prey.  

Today I was a titmouse defender. I mean, I didn't build the nest box as a feeding station for jays.

"Get the hell out of here," I protest as I toss a stick up towards it. 

Under the usual  circumstances the jay would be gone, but now sneaky jay only flies up a branch. 

It doesn't regard me as a threat, and it has a lot more time than I do.