Camera shy coyotes

[Jan. 27, 2009; 9:31 PM)

This was the best we did in the coyote department on set 206 in Marin County. (And the picture is cropped.) 

The camera was not hidden or camouflaged. We gathered old turds and made an artificial yote latrine not far from the camera.

And we doctored those turds with a commercial coyote scent.

I think the yodel dogs move back and forth on the trail regularly, but most of the pictures looked like this. 

[Jan 27, 2009; 8:50 AM]

Yes, that's a coyote down the trail. Here's another one cropped a bit.

[ Feb 4, 2009; 9:08 AM]

It was a productive set with an 80 - 85% success rate (# animal frames/total # frames), and 3 to 6.6 pictures per day, which isn't bad for a trail. 

Deer traffic was high (305 photos)-- this old fire cut led to a deer trail in the adjacent woods.

We got 18 bobcat photos, 8 pictures of people, and 6 of coyotes. 

Plus, a couple of scrub jays, a brush rabbit, and a raccoon. 

I'm sure a mountain lion would have eventually shown up, but I wanted to try again in another place, mainly for those elusive coyotes.

So I pulled the cam and made a new set in the coastal scrub, but this one is camouflaged.