Camera Trap Codger

A Room with a View

2012-02-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

The snag -- a canyon live oak.

If hollow trees were sentient beings, they would cringe when they see me coming.

You see, the codger regularly administers an examination of hollow trees that resembles a colonoscopy.

Looking up from the bottom.

My point and shoot camera is the endoscope.

It's a harmless procedure for tree and examiner, though there's a remote risk that something inside might clamp down on your arm during the examination.

All you do is stick your handheld camera into the cavity, point it upward, press the shutter release, and check the resulting image on the LCD.

Most of the time the cavity is shallow and filled with rotten wood and spider webs.

The conjoined trunks of this oak however measured 12 feet around, and both were hollow and free of spider webs, indicating that furry mammals used it regularly.

Looking down from the top -- a distance of 11 feet.

One trunk had a capacious space that tapered upwards and extended into the limbs.

The cavity opened to the outside 11 feet up, where a limb had snapped off some years ago.

There was another "window" 5 feet above ground.

The cavity was a room with a view, but the most interesting view was from the outside looking in.

I could see inside from three openings, and decided the best view for the camera trap was looking down from the top.

A camera trap wedgie

I lodged the camera into the opening, and when I came back a week later found 353 photos of brush mice and dusky-footed wood rats.

Wood rat ascending the hollow trunk.

There were no surprises. It was a busy place, and I expected rodents, but I wanted to show them in a setting we don't normally see.

Brush mouse caught in the midst of a grooming session. This picture was taken at noon, long after bedtime.

The upper reaches of the cavity seemed to be a wood rat's feeding perch, but for the life of me I cannot identify the food.

Wood rat eating unidentified insect???

Mr Smiley of Bunyipco thinks it might be the instar or larval form of a cicada.

If so, the rat dug it up, because at this time of year all cicadas are immature and live in the soil.

Glimpsing natural history in a hollow log can raise unanswered questions, but that's good.

If images from a camera trap don't make you wonder you are missing one of the simple pleasures of the sport.

Deadwood Stick Real Estate.

2012-02-05T19:30:00.000-08:00

Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that winter is the time to check out real estate.

The irrepressible Random Truth has been doing just that.

He's been regaling his fans with photos of properties on the SF peninsula and their stunning homeowners, and his candid reportage has gotten a lot of folks off their duffs.

They're out cruising the neighborhoods, scoping real estate.

I had already filed and almost forgotten this photo of an impressive mansion I recently encountered.

It was in an upscale community near Arcata.

Thought you would enjoy a glimpse of luxury.

Here's the listing from Deadwood Stick Realty.

"Spacious construction in a gated community on a quiet country road.
Intimate setting. Built to last. Arts and crafts home with pleasing rustic touches. Hardwood stick floors, walls, and ceilings. Great dining room with 3 attached larders. Master bedroom generously provisioned with bay laurel. Passive solar heating warms the home in winter, and 2 composting toilets keep the master bedroom toasty warm. 4 strategically placed exits guarantee safe emergency evacuations.Stunning views of the scenic Mad River. Frolic or fish in crystal clear pools just outside your back door.

80% financing available to qualified buyers."

The Goose Pen

2012-01-29T21:19:00.000-08:00

A goose pen with a circumference of 38 feet
can hold a lot of geese or sleep several loggers.

If you have seen one redwood you have NOT seen them all.

This old veteran was hidden in the brush and almost escaped our notice.

Standing 20 feet high, with a dbh (diameter at breast height) of 12 feet, it was one impressive stump and deserved thorough exploration.

I climbed down through a rent into the cavity 4 feet below the ground.

Several passages of differing size led to the outside through the charred walls, and internal recesses reached deeply into the roots.

This was one helluva place for a camera trap; so we climbed through the slash back to the truck and returned with the gear.

Then it started to rain.

The stump was not much of an umbrella; the camera case was soon wet, and the camera lens fogged immediately.

I tried drying it, but it was too dark to see what I was doing. I gave up and hoped for the best.

Before continuing our rounds, we interred some pieces of road killed squirrel into and under the old stump's walls.

Later that afternoon I told Lowell about the magnificent stump.

"You know what they call them up here?", he asked.

"Goose pens. The old timers used to pen up their geese in those stumps."

The goose pen rewarded us with 107 photos of 9 species, and a success rate of 95%, which means there were few false triggers.

The deer mouse and wood rat of course were the first to show, but a hermit thrush appeared shortly after the alders dropped their leaves into the stump.

A Trowbridge shrew almost escaped my notice, but there it was, the voracious and fearsome midget mammal.

The brush rabbit's venture is a mystery. What was the attraction? It seemed a risky place considering the other visitors.

Of all the visitors, however, Fang the opossum spent the most time there (7 visits, 37 photos).

A bobcat paid three visits and left 11 images,

while a curious gray fox and a wet bear paused to examine the camera.

Though I like other images better, the shrew and the bear gave me the biggest thrill.

When I got home I realized I was missing my side cutting pliers.

You can see their blue handles under the bobcat's foot.

The blue plastic grips were all but missing when I recovered them.

There were rat nibble marks on the remaining traces of plastic, but the pliers still work.

A fisher stopped by the other day

2012-01-22T19:15:00.000-08:00

Fisher on an ancient stump in the redwoods of Humbolt County

Long ago when the Earth was wintry and game was scarce, fisher summoned his friends to break into Skyland.

Only wolverine had the brawn to tear the sky open, and through the hole warmth and birds swept down on the frozen earth below.

The intrusion so displeased the Sky People that they shot fisher with bow and arrow.

But as fisher was dying they realized the great hunter from Earth, fisher, was a good guy looking out for his friends.

So the Great Spirit took pity, nursed fisher's wounds, and hung him in the sky.

The next time you gaze at the Big Dipper, remember that you are also looking at fisher.

* * * * *

I was blithely basking in January's seductive weather, occupying myself with dog-outings and garage projects, when my thoughts drifted to Humbolt's redwoods and a sobering vision assaulted my reverie.

I saw my stoic sentinels, the clear-eyed cameras of November past, listing on their posts, draped in soggy spider webs, and speckled with splash-dirt.

I saw a prostrate camera -- disemboweled and filled with water.

This worrisome vision ignited a burning flame under the codger's skinny butt.

The cams had been there for over two months, and soon the long-overdue storm would dump its Pacific payload and close Rt 299 through the Trinity Alps.

The cams could be stranded for another month or two, or an impatient codger could get marooned in Sasquatch country.

I emailed Lowell and Terry, got the green light for a visit, and a few days later did the 5-hour drive.

The next day we checked and serviced the cams which were indeed draped with spider webs, and at the end of the day we viewed the pixeled fisher -- ah, the sweet thrill of camera trap victory.

Upon checking the EXIF data, we found the road-killed squirrel had cured for a month before fisher scented the delicacy just before noon on a sunny December day.

It groomed a bit before digging in,

Revealing a spotted throat and a bit of a white tush.

then ate at a leisurely pace.

It finished in 10 minutes, and the cam captured 31 photos.

There were enough images to see that this fisher has a white spot on the underside of its right wrist, which means we may be able to recognize it in the future.

I have now cam-trapped all but two of California's slinky mustelids -- northern otter, mink, short-tailed and long-tailed weasels, badger, American marten, and fisher.

Wolverine and sea otter remain.

I'm not after the sea otter, nor the state of California's only wolverine.

If I camtrapped the wolverine, however, I could boast a Grand Slam of the golden state's terrestrial mustelids.

Does anyone know the whereabouts of Buddy the bachelor wolverine this winter?

A hard-to-get tree vole

2012-01-15T21:18:00.000-08:00

Arborimus pomo, the Sonoma tree vole

At last the hard-to-get Sonoma tree vole, the secret of the Douglas fir forest, the mainstay of Northern spotted owls was captured in pixels.

I hope you are sitting there in wonderment as you view the seldom-seen rodent at work in its nest 35 feet above ground.

And if you want to fill in the picture conjure the feel of the damp coastal air, the woodsy scent of conifers, and the murmur of the Mad River.

The cams had been in the field for 70 days, but the batteries in this one called it quits on November 20th, only 18 days after we made the set.

But 267 images is still a good haul, so we uploaded to my laptop on the tailgate of Terry's pickup, and as we flipped through the images we found that the vole's nest had a life of its own.

Indeed it expanded and deflated like a slumbering mini poodle, and several shots showed a centipede and a millipede grubbing about in the midden of resin ducts and twigs.

The tree vole on the other hand exposed itself in only 10 pictures, and of those only two were full body shots.

She revealed her tail and slender hips,

A full frame view of the nest of Douglas fir needles with the vole hauling a Douglas fir sprig.

but most of the time she was hauling and hidden behind twigs of Douglas fir.

A cropped view of the vole from the photo above.

Back home I retrieved my Arborimus file and found that our modest success was a far cry from that of Eric Forsman and his colleagues at Oregon State University who studied the related red tree vole (Arborimus longicaudus).

Using a commercial video camera system they captured and analyzed over 300 days of videos totaling 6700 hours, and refuted the belief that tree voles are "slow, docile and somewhat clumsy climbers".

That dubious reputation was based on observations of sleepy and confused tree voles that had been rousted from their nests during the day.

On the contrary, they found that foraging voles "were often so rapid it was hard to follow them as they scurried in and out of the nest."

That speed explained why over 95% of our pictures were blank; the rodent activated the camera trap's sensor but was usually gone when the shutter released.

As for the changing size of the nest, successive photos show resin ducts accumulating at the top of the nest and then sliding down.

It seems the vole's favorite feeding perch might have been just above the camera's view.

One of these days we'll take on the tree vole with a video camera, but I make no promises as to when.

I have two DXG 125s on the work bench, but hacking an HD video camera is far more intimidating than a point and shoot camera.

Reference

Forsman, E.D., J.K. Swingle, and N.R. Hatch. 2009. Behavior of red tree voles (Arborimus longicaudus) based on continuous video monitoring of nests. Northwest Science, 83(3):262-272.

Spooky cameras and squirrelly neophobia

2012-01-08T11:00:00.000-08:00

The spooky camera on the fence post
with the ominous blinking red eye.

We visited my daughter's family in northern Virginia over Thanksgiving, and there was so much squirrel traffic on the neighbor's rail fence that I decided to get some video clips.

The fence was a high speed overpass to the neighbor's bird feeders.

Squirrels raced to and fro along the top rail and hurdled the tops of the fence posts.

This definitely had possibilities for camera trapping, so I set a camera against one of the posts and waited a few hours for eye-level videos of on-coming Olympians leaping over the camera.

The squirrels regarded the camera as a scary intruder.

Maybe it was just the camera as a novel object, but I also got the impression that the blinking red eye (the passive infrared status light) made it even more spooky.

I set a second camera to see exactly what was going on, and this little video tells the story.

A snack in Amlekhganj

2012-01-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

The remains of the narrow gauge railway
north of Birgunj, Nepal.

"Nepal was not only unwelcoming, it was virtually inaccessible . . . The most common entry route, apart from that taken by the Sherpas . . . was at the Indian border railhead at Raxaul. From there, rail passengers transferred to the narrow gauge Nepal State Railway. This little toylike train took four hours to cover the twenty-five or so miles across the southern Nepalese plain to Amlekanj, where passengers transferred to car or bus . . ." Fallen Giants, a history of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes.

"What do you want for your birthday, dad?"

"Chas Clifton mentioned a good book the other day", I responded, and so I acquired my copy of Isserman and Weaver's fat volume, Fallen Giants.

It gathered dust on the nightstand for several months, but in need of reading material for a flight over Thanksgiving, I stuffed it into my carry-on and was soon swept away from the here and now.

Fallen Giants is a great chronicle of human endeavor seasoned with political agendas, the clash of cultures, and the madness that motivates some mountaineers.

And since I had visited Nepal many times in the 70s and 80s, the Nepalese place names rang a few bells.

One of them was dusty little Amlekhganj at the foot of the fossil-rich Sivalik Range (or Churias).

We stopped there on December 18, 1982 during a long return trip from West Bengal, India.

Butt sore, famished, and seriously needing a break, we took a stiff-legged stroll looking for food.

The "little toylike train" was already gone; villagers had long since appropriated the sleepers for fire wood, and the rails were sinking into the ground.

But the railway station, absent the hustle and bustle was still there.

I think a Brahmin businessman had taken possession and was storing bags of rice in a locked room.

The abandoned railway station in Amlekhganj, December 18, 1982

Our noses led us across the road through the huts and lean-tos to the inviting pall of wood smoke wafting from Laxman Ghale's food stall.

The huts and lean-tos

Straight-backed and cross-legged, the young man resembled a lean Lord Buddha, but I was disabused of this notion when he smartly rapped the noggin of one of his boy helpers.

The boys fetched us little stools, and the cook resumed kneading something in a chipped enamel bowl.

And what were those bile-colored chunks he so lovingly massaged?

"Khasi", smiled Hemanta, "castrated goat." ( He honored the two vowels and pronounced it "gowut".)

"Very tasty", he added. "We'll have a snack of khasi shekwa, my friend -- what you Americans call barbecue."

Laxman Ghale in his stall preparing hhasi shehwa.

Laxman earned 150 Rupees a day, paid and fed the two boy helpers, and supported his parents who lived in a shack behind his stand.

And he was a Ghale, a tribal group I'd never heard of, which appealed to my inner anthropologist.

"How about these boys?" I asked my friend, "are they Ghales too?"

More banter followed, and my friend laughed lustily in a Nepali version of the wicked Francophone.

To this the feisty lad who was fanning the coals frowned ominously and fanned ashes toward my friend.

"The little bugger's name is Sambhu Thapa, but he doesn't look Chhetri to me. I told him his mother tricked his father."

Ah yes, I'd heard that one before.

In Hemanta's encyclopedia of amusing Nepaliana were some gems, and questioning a son's paternity -- "Look you little bastard, only I know who your real father is." -- was the maternal response to the last straw of mother-son conflict.

The feisty Sambhu was not amused, though we had little doubt that his mother had numerous occasions to cast doubt on his paternity before.

Hemanta was still waxing eloquent on the virtues of Nepali child-rearing methods when the goat kabobs were served and we were treated to a visit by the local pie dogs.

Two were scruffy skulking runts, the other a robust impeccably groomed black and white dog with an air of confidence.

The handsome dog had been an incurable fighter, explained Laxman Ghale, until the town's folk grew tired of it all. The price had been castration.

A shame, I thought. Such a fine specimen of canine machismo.

I wondered if he had had a chance to sow his wild oats.

Hemanta translated.

"How could he", laughed Laxman Ghale, 'he's castrated!"

The joke was on me.

And how do they castrate a dog in a Nepali village? I asked.

Hemanta didn't have to ask our cook.

"They brick them", was Hemanta's quick reply, and once again my crafty host was obliged to explain the obvious.

"Some villagers hold the dogs legs apart, and . . . " his motions told the rest.

And that, my friends, is what I recorded in my notes about a memorable snack in Amlekhganj.

Carnivorous squirrel

2011-12-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

Rocky hauls off a squirrel's head

Sierra County, California; August-September, 2011 -- Camera trap set # 531

Our northern flying squirrels have a refined palate.

Not only do they relish mushrooms, truffles, and tender lichens; they also enjoy well-aged meat -- in this case road-killed western tree squirrel.

At this set amongst red firs on a north slope we expected a bear or a fox, hoped for a marten, and dreamt of a wolverine, but the only takers were the flying squirrel, a chipmunk and an American robin.

With 16 visits over 2 and a half weeks Rocky's persistence paid off.

He succeeded in running off with the head, which we had left lying on the rock.

Then he somehow managed to extract a joint of squirrel from under a slab of rock.

Fifty plus years ago, Robert T. Orr (late curator of birds and mammals at the California Academy of Sciences) told the boy-codger he was surprised to catch flying squirrels on Sonora Pass in meat-baited traps set for martens.

These appealing rodents haven't lost their taste for meat.

A windfall of cherries

2011-12-06T21:06:00.001-08:00

Hollyleaf cherry (Prunus ilicifolia)

A year and a half ago we were bumping along in the pickup when a bulb above Random Truth's head suddenly filled the cab with bright light.

"How about setting a cam in that patch of hollyleaf cherries on Gillam Spring Road?".

According to the scatological calendar it was that time of year again: the landscape was littered with carnivore scat, as it always is, but now most of the scat was chock full o' nuts, which means the critters were pigging out on wild cherries.

You can't mistake the pit of the hollyleaf cherry for anything else. As cherry pits go, they are BEEEG.

"Good idea, RT".

I am fond of windfall sets, but Craig was non-commital.

"You never know who's gonna show up at the cherry patch", I continued, "and ringtail might make a surprise appearance.

If indeed Craig was lukewarm to the idea, the mention of the elusive Chimineas ringtail changed his mind. He headed for Gillam Spring Road.

Well, we were too late in 2010. The cherries were past fruiting.

But we didn't forget.

A bumper crop of hollyleaf cherries called us back in 2011, and we set a camera at the assigned thicket.

We fetched it a month later and found over 400 photos.

The most common visitor (151 photos) was our old friend the wood rat.

The wood rat (probably Neotoma macrotis) hauling a stick , which it dropped a few moments later.

In two shots the rodents were carrying cherries, in three shots they were hauling sticks, and the rest of the time they were running around or exploring.

Gray foxes appeared on 4 occasions, and there was one photo of a bear's backside, clearly detectable only after photoshopping.

There were no surprises at set 530; in fact it was a bit of a disappointment.

I knew the wood rats would be there; they're everywhere.

But I thought they would tell us a different story, a story about fulfilling their manifest destiny as seed dispersers.

Not this time.

If we try again, with cameras at several patches of hollyleaf cherry, wood rat might give us a surprise.

But there are a lot of other subjects worthy of camera trapping, and wood rat can always be relied on for a cameo appearance.

The lofty realm of the tree vole

2011-11-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

“’It was a hard climb.’ Bailey wrote in his field report, ‘butthe large flat nest at once showed fresh signs and I dug in with great care.’”

It was 1914 and Vernon Bailey was at Spencer Butte, Oregon,perched in the lofty realm of the red tree vole 80 feet above ground.

A few moments later a vole appeared on the limb and startedits escape.

“With increasing anxiety, he watched the little vole makeits way along the branches, deliberately, slowly, seemingly dazed by the brightlight of daytime.

“Conflicting feelings tugged at Bailey, his paradoxrealized: he never before had seen a living specimen of a red tree vole andwished to observe as much of its habits as he could; at the same time he didnot want to lose his opportunity to collect the specimen.

“’I could take no chances of losing so precious a specimen’,he later wrote. With the tree vole about twenty feet from him, he drew hiscollecting pistol, aimed slightly to one side so as not to damage the fur, andknocked the animal to the ground.

As George Jobanek wrote in his excellent historicalchronicle of naturalists pursuing tree voles from which I have quoted, the Biological Survey’sBailey finally collected the elusive red tree vole a day before his 50^thbirthday.

If the codger is lucky, he’ll "bag" the rodent in pixels beforethe year is out.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to climb 80 feet, and I was armedwith a camera trap rather than a shooting iron.

Reference

Jobanek, G.A. 1988. Searching for the tree vole: an episodein the 1914 Biological Survey of Oregon. Oregon Historical Quarterly,89(4):369-400.

Looking up from the nest.

The camera ready to go (the rope came down with the climber)

A meal that kept giving

2011-11-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

There was no gaseous bloat, no writhing skin bag of maggots.

Just a cold carcass, which in the words of cowboy curmudgeon Wallace McRae, had barely started its 'transformation ride'*.

"Now, if we had 'really beeg cojones' ", I mused, "we'd gut this elk and put a cam in the body cavity".

The gaggingly repugnant but most sporting of camera trap sets -- the 'chest-cavity set' periodically tempts me as a route to up-close and personal pics of hide-tearing flesh-gulping predators.

Cavity sets, if you are willing to crawl into dark places, are usually reserved for hollow logs, burrows and caves.

Wildlife photographer Alan Root knows no limits in such matters (at least in his youth), and to him we owe gratitude for showing the marvelous possibilities in Mysterious Castles of Clay.

Even if you don a garbage bag, setting a camera in the chest cavity of a large dead ungulate is a messy feat.

But who would opt for the alternative of crawling into the rib cage and spending the night there with camera in hand?

And yet, there's more than one account of a freezing frontiersman bundling up in a fresh buffalo hide or crawling into an eviscerated but steaming carcass.

A sound sleep they didn't get, but kick-boxing wolves under a wet hide certainly warmed them up.

But I'm getting off track.

As you might have guessed, our cojones were not equal to the task, so we settled for the unimaginative 'cam-beside-carcass set', and we still got some surprises.

The cams were set for night photos, but circumstantial evidence told us that vultures first feasted on elk lips and eyeballs; then they scalped the faces, slit their bellies, dragged out the viscera, and liberally whitewashed the neighborhood.

The carcasses grew gaunt but were still in one piece a month later.

Only 3 scavengers were to be counted in pixels, and only a deer mouse was photographed climbing into the meat locker.

The rest tended the carrion like a garden, apparently picking tender maggots and crunchy beetles from the exodus generated by aging flesh.

A burrowing owl was the most popular visitor -- making 9 forays.

A coyote made 3 visits, but was never seen tearing hide or gulping meat.

Like the owl it seemed to harvest insects, but lacking a beak, straw was unavoidable.

The fare at this diner didn't measure up to the beef at the Carrion Cafe.

The elk was more like a garden -- a meal that kept giving.

*/ If you were too lazy to click on the first link, I'm reminding you that you won't regret reading McRae's "Reincarnation".

On the road

2011-11-13T20:31:00.001-08:00

Bigfoot statue at the Bigfoot Museum
in Willow Creek.

The codger's spending more time on the road.

The 8 hour drive to Chimineas wasn't enough.

I extended my camera trapping range north to Humbolt County, the fog belt, California's NW coast.

The charisma of the red tree vole made me do it.

This corner of tree vole country is 250-road miles from home, and for half of the ride I track the winding course of the Trinity River.

This is also the heart of Bigfoot county, but the only big feet I saw were those of middle-aged men in waders.

They leave their pug marks between the road shoulder and the banks of the Trinity.

Trinity River with middle-aged men in waders.

The ride to the Chimineas Ranch on the other hand is even longer -- 400 miles from home -- and the scenery only gets interesting the last hour or so when you leave Rt 5.

I prefer the ride to Humbolt County, where I am not vulnerable to the uncanny physiological effect of wide open space on the weight of my accelerator foot.

A few months ago the codger fell victim to this phenomenon on a remote stretch of highway, which caught the attention of an officer of the California Highway Patrol.

It wasn't far from where James Dean met his ending 56 years ago.

I thanked the officer with mixed feelings and drove home in a blue funk.

I paid the fine, paid the fee to attend on-line traffic school, and read the lessons every morning over coffee.

When I passed the written exam the burden of guilt and worry disappeared.

The codger no longer races with the flock down Rt 5.

He looks like a lame old goose in the right lane, cursing the 18 wheelers.

And when he crosses into the fast lane he lives with the ire of Nascar impersonators who ride his tail, flash headlights, sneer, flip me off, and pass in a huff.

No longer does he just look like a codger.

Now he truly drives like one.

It makes for long and trying road trips.

My adventures are reserved for the woods. They begin when I arrive, not when I hit the road.

Meanwhile, the ongoing quest for tree voles continues.

If you are interested, read one of my old buddy's accounts in Rivers Wind Notes.

When the water's low

2011-11-06T20:25:00.000-08:00

It didn't take long for the great blue heron to nail something in the darkness -- perhaps a tadpole or fish.

With the exception of weasels and ringtails, it seems almost everything at the Chimineas Ranch gravitates to the waterholes in late summer.

They don't always just stop for a drink either. This pool was filled with fish, perhaps bluegills, and the raccoons waded about while the pigs rooted on the banks.

For the life of me I can't identify the prey.

Can you?

The Halloween pig's advice

2011-10-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

"Pig out, kids, but try to share your candy with your little brothers and sisters. Okay?"

An update on Barny

2011-10-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a brief update for those of you who recall Barny's engaging summertime performances in a grassy swale on Barrett Creek last year.

The bird was a real charmer, and seemed to be playing predator games with seed heads of grass.

Owl specialist Hans Peeters advised us to "get it on video"; the pictures were intriguing, but they were only snapshots.

To make the case that the birds are playing predator, we need action-packed sequences of stalk, dance and pounce.

Unfortunately, we missed the opportunity to film Barny's actions this year, but we did set cameras at water holes in September, and it was reassuring to find Barny or his/her impersonators there.

There were many pictures of the usual shenanigans, and this time there was a trio of cakewalkers.

Since I just got a very good deal on a video cam (a DXG-567v with Infra-red array) I believe we'll be able to get that footage next year.

[Note: these pictures were taken with dated but reliable Cuddabacks supplied by Brian Miller of the Wind River Ranch.]

The Restless Haystack

2011-10-23T20:13:00.000-07:00

A mountain beaver or showtl on the job -- is it making hay or pitching its tent?

In 1995 Mark Johnson published an article on tents that cover the burrows of mountain beavers.

"Supporting sticks were placed over and across the entrances. Then, sticks were placed perpendicular to these over the entrances. Finally, leafy sticks of big leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum), sword fern (Polystichum munitum), or both were placed across the sticks concealing the entrances."

The tents were clearly the handiwork of the showtls and not the caring gesture of a passing Sasquatch.

Not all burrows had tents, but Johnson thought they may keep burrows dry in a rainy climate.

Though usually agreeable, showtl enthusiasts have at times disagreed about the animal's tolerance of water.

A pioneering student of the showtl, C. A. Hubbard opined that the rodent shuns watery tunnels, "because Aplodontia cares for water only as a drink."

Lloyd Glenn Ingles on the other hand averred that, "Living as it often does near water, the animal is a fine swimmer."

Yours truly and his student camera trappers have also given photographic proof that showtls and their neighbors have no qualms about scooting through watery tunnels.

I have the feeling that the showtl's tent may be a drying rack for plant cuttings, that is, nothing more than a haystack, and haystacks have also been reported numerous times in the scientific literature.

The big question is about the criss-cross arrangement of the sticks.

Are they an act of God or an act of mountain beavers?

I've assumed they were an act of God, that they just happened to be there as they had fallen from the trees.

We have actually removed a few sticks from some burrows for better pictures, and if the rodent replaced them with others, I for one didn't notice.

But I am greatly intrigued by Johnson's suggestion, though apparently based on circumstantial evidence rather than direct observation.

A rodent that builds a tent or a drying rack by dragging sticks over its burrow is a remarkable rodent.

It's a tool user.

So confirming Johnson's tent-building observation is on the list for next year's showtl work.

If you haven't seen a showtl's haystack, here's a sequence of 30 photos taken during a week near Yuba Pass, California.

Try to stay awake. It's less than a minute and the action gets exciting at the end.

References

Hubbard, C.A. 1922. Some data on the rodent Aplodontia. The Murrelet 3(1):14-18.

Ingles, L.G. 1965. Mammals of the Pacific States. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.

Johnson, M.K. 1975. Tent building in mountain beavers (Aplodontia rufa). Journal of Mammalogy, 56(3):715-715.

Quest for the Mountain Loris

2011-10-19T21:37:00.000-07:00

When Rich Tenaza invited me to join him on a trip to Tajikistan I regretfully turned it down.

I'd been to Asia already once this year and I knew another trip would be a hard sell at home.

Rich is also a great leg-puller, and I suspected I was about to become the victim of his mirth.

But I was wrong.

Being an old Asia Hand, Rich is always ready for adventure East of Suez, and he was hell bent on following up on an intriguing sighting from Tajikistan.

In 2002 University of Pacific alumnus Tom Mohr was camping at the north end of Iskanderkul, a lake resort in Tajikistan, when he encountered a strange slow- moving animal with piercing eyes.

He contacted Prof. Tenaza, and so began the dialogue.

The only thing that fit his description was the slow loris, Nycticebus bengalensis.

So Rich sent Tom a video of a slow loris, and Tom confirmed that the animal in the video resembled the one he had seen.

This is strange, because the nearest population of slow lorises, in SE Bhutan and NE India, is over 1200 miles from Tajikistan's cold mountains.

But these are strange times.

New species are still being discovered, and species thought to be extinct are being re-discovered, alive and well, in remote outposts.

Rich knew that the possibility of something outrageous, like a range extension of the slow loris couldn't be dismissed.

He has made bizarre discoveries before. He was the first to observe the pangolin's rolling stone escape -- yes, the pangolins disappearance act consists of curling up in a ball and rolling downhill like a cannonball.

So Rich organized a camera trapping expedition, which included UOP engineering emeritus Dave Fletcher, Coby Ward from the Department of Mathematics. and Tom Mohr and his wife Rayhan.

Tom knows the region well; he is married to a lady from Kazakhstan and works for Project Hope in Central Asia.

Mohr interviewing a local.

The group spent 17 days in the Iskanderkul area interviewing residents, setting cameras and applying lures of slow loris urine nearby.

Their cameras photographed

little brown bears (Ursus arctos),

big brown bears,

Tolai hares (Lepus tolai),

rats (perhaps Rattus pyctoris) ,

and ravens.

If the mountain loris is there, the lure didn't do its trick.

Neither did the wolf bait.

As Dave Fletcher tells it, "Rich bought a sheep and had it slaughtered to use
as bait for wolves and other carnivores.

"We managed to get shots of domestic cattle, until a large black and white dog showed up and ate all the meat.

"On the positive side, the family we stayed with enjoyed the mutton.

The existence of the mountain loris in Tajikistan remains unconfirmed

Moral of the story: Any wildlife report of a strange slow-moving animal with piercing eyes is a excellent reason to mount an expedition.

How to find a tree vole's nest

2011-10-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of meeting Lowell Diller and his staff last week at Green Diamond Resource Company.

This is California's NW coast: redwoods, Douglas fir and banana slugs, the rain forest.

Appropriately, it was raining.

Lowell gave me a lesson in finding tree vole nests.

Drive very slowly with your head out the window, one eye on the road, and one eye on the canopy.

Note: we were on a restricted dirt logging road.

Don't try it on winding roads with traffic, like the coast highway.

When you find what looks like a nest made of fir needles scope it out with binoculars to see if it is occupied.

A mass of brown Douglas fir needles means it is vacant. A spotted owl might have nailed the occupant, or the vole just moved on.

If it is littered with green sprigs of fir and green resin ducts you probably have an active nest.

Diller is a pro at it, but it didn't take long for the codger to catch on.

When I spotted the atypical nest below, I passed the final exam with flying colors.

Saw dust rub-a-dub

2011-10-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

"What in the bejeebers is going on in there?"

Chipmunk (in this case, the shadow chipmunk Neotamias senex) showed up an hour after we made the camera trap set.

It cased the joint and disappeared.

The rodent was back later that week, after the bear and shrew appearances.

The coast was clear, so it stripped down and dived into the sawdust.

Yes, carpenter ants provide some useful services, including sawdust production.

For a long time the ant gallery in that tree has showered sawdust on everything poking its head in the door.

But it's not really sawdust per se. It's frass, which is actually insect poop.

Carpenter ants, however, just chew up the wood without passing it through their system; so their frass is a wholesome product that smells like a wood working shop.

Chipmunk seems to have developed a powerful hankering for the stuff, because it came back a week later to luxuriate in it.

It tumbled and rolled with reckless abandon,

and then soaked a while, having chipmunk thoughts.

No doubt this is an impeccably clean chipmunk, with the outdoorsy musk of Paul Bunyan.

Here's an instructional sequence intended for hygienically challenged chipmunks, just so they know how it is done.

And yes, in case you were wondering, the codger did doctor the opening picture of this blogpost.

Trowbridge shrew

2011-10-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

I mistook this for a mouse, but on the computer screen at home it was clear that the ears were too small.

There are two species of shrews in the northern Sierra Nevada that sport brown summer coats and bi-colored tails.

The Wandering or Vagrant shrew (Sorex vagrans) prefers open meadows, while Trowbridge's shrew (Sorex trowbridgii) is found in conifer and mixed deciduous forests.

This hollow tree is in an extensive stand of red fir; so I am assuming we are looking at Trowbridge's shrew.

Shrews don't stay put, and they tend to be found in microhabitats overlooked by most camera trappers.

It's a special occasion when I get a photo of one.

The bear comes back

2011-10-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

That hollow red fir in Sierra County was an enchanting place, and I wasn't ready to pull the camera after just one month.

A natural shelter like that is such an attraction to wildlife that you never know what's going to stick its head in the door.

The yearling bear visited on four more occasions, giving us a better selection of portraits, but on the second visit it knocked the camera ajar.

We might have missed quite a show if it had remained pointing at the entrance, but by a stroke of good luck it was still upright and aimed at a pile of carpenter ant frass.

Next time you'll see an incidental visitor, after that an unabashed show of sensuality.

Ig Nobel Awards

2011-09-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

The Codger is proud to announce that childhood chum, David Rentz, aka Mr Smiley of BunyipCo, received an Ig Nobel Award with distinguished fellow entomologist, Darryl Gwynne.

View the ceremony here and have some good chuckles.

It's 2 hours of jolly good fun, but you can drag the time slider to 1:39:00 and learn how these two esteemed scientists discovered that a certain brand of Australian beer (the "stubbies" have love handles) lure male buprestid beetles into romantic dalliance.

Read the 2-page original work here.

BTW, Mr Smiley joined us at Chimineas last week.

Rentz and Alice at Chimineas.
Is he getting a bright idea -- or is that a mercury vapor lamp?

More subway traffic

2011-09-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

An adventuresome chickaree was one of two new sightings in the showtl's subway.

It was photographed exploring the tunnel twice, in the morning and afternoon.

JK of Cameratrapping Campus had a similar chickaree (or Douglas squirrel) experience at another showtl burrow a few miles from here.

What's going on? Are they hunting for truffles down there?

Chickarees are well known as fungus connoisseurs, but I know of no reports of their activities as subterranean fungus-foragers.

A long-tailed meadow mouse also trolleyed through a few days later (mid morning and late afternoon).

Most curious however was another appearance of the water shrew.

Is its peculiar posture just a coincidence or is it pushing mud in the middle of the tunnel?

The mud appeared on August 27 shortly after midnight, and the shrew was photographed 21 hours later, and once again 2 days after that.

After that the mud pile slowly disappeared.

I'd love to know what it was up to.

I am sure the showtls' tunnels hold many more secrets of natural history.

Will the real Ermine please stand up

2011-09-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

September 3, 4:39AM -- in the showtl's underworld

We are just back from the north fork of the Yuba River.

Yesterday, the Codger, the Redhead, Audrey, and Fred pulled the last three camera traps, and I am terribly amped.

The picture above is one of the reasons.

You may recall that the codger was uncertain that "Herman the Ermine" was correctly identified in a recent "underworld post".

A few commentors thought the suspect was an American mink.

The unmistakable ermine pictured above confirms that the previous mustelid was indeed Slinky the Minkie.

This ermine was photographed in the same Aplodontia (=showtl) tunnel where the mink made its appearance last month.

To get an idea of the relative sizes of this little predator and its prey, compare the two pictures, which I have cropped more or less to the same size.

Like the mink, the ermine evidently failed to find the showtl, which showed up 6 days later.

Its absence makes you wonder if predator detection changed the rodent's use of the tunnel system.

Anyway, we're not done yet.

We staked out several Aplodontia burrows for camera trapping next year.

Our winter work is cut out for us. We've got to get faster cameras so we can diminish the number of false exposures down there in the showtl's underworld.

There's a lot of traffic and probably a few visitors that are just too fast for our cameras.

And to give you a bigger view of the showtl's busy underworld, here's an uncropped photo.

Searching for the Arabian Leopard

2011-09-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

American David Stanton is planning a camera trapping survey of Arabian Leopards in northwestern Yemen.

Stanton taught school in Yemen for 19 years, and knows the country, its people and its wildlife very well.

When he became aware of the Arabian leopard's questionable and tenuous status in Yemen he rallied for its protection by organizing the Foundation for the Protection of the Arabian Leopard in Yemen.

What is needed now is a systematic camera trapping survey.

The IUCN's Cat Specialist Group has endorsed the idea.

This worthy project is soliciting modest funds through Kickstarter.

Stanton writes,

"This Kickstarter appeal represents the best option we've found to date for citizens around the world to contribute to our work, but as you know by now it is very time sensitive. Only two weeks to go."

Please take the time to read about it, and make a contribution.

Even a small amount will help.

Confirmation of a viable population of Arabian Leopards in Yemen would provide the justification the government needs to designate a protected area for its continued survival.

Flying ace in a cool cave

2011-09-12T19:25:00.000-07:00

This sandstone caveat the Chimineas Ranch was new to us.

A steep bank of loose sandseparated it from the creek bed below and required a ratherhigh-stepping fandango to reach it.

The cool interior was awelcome contrast to the heat of the arroyo, and we wondered what speciesnormally visit such a place.

To answer the question westaked the camera without bait or lure, and since the camera would beconstantly in shaded light, we set it for 24 hr.

There were no surprises,no tawny snoozers in the heat of the day, just a California groundsquirrel, woodrats, and cottontails.

The woodrats of courseused the place as their latrine, which attracted a buzz of flies.

The Say's Phoebe caughtthem on the wing, giving an entertaining air show while performing amuch needed public service.

Peeping in

2011-09-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

The hollow belly of the red fir seems like a safe and snuggly place.

It's quiet in there and it's dry, even though frass rains down 24/7 from the gallery of wood ants above.

Bob's observation that "the cavity . . . looks like a bear den" was right on the money.

Ten hours after we left the scene a bear peeked into the cavity.

In the next week the opening framed a robin several times,

and a chipmunk made a brief visit.

Then a small bear paid a visit,

and toppled the camera.

The camera took pictures of wood ants on thr floor of the den until we came back and reset it.

If I had a time lapse camera with 5 months of battery power, this would be a fine place to monitor a sleeping bear.

[If you like this sort of thing, be sure to check Random Truth's bear-in-the-log pictures.]

The Showtl's Underworld, Part 4

2011-09-04T19:49:00.000-07:00

Can you see the bristles on its hind feet?

Well, neither can I.

Bristled feet are a diagnostic characteristic of the world's smallest diving mammal -- the American water shrew.

The photo doesn't do justice to the shrew's hairy feet, but that doesn't mean it isn't Sorex palustris.

It matches the other external features.

Water shrews look like miniature torpedoes when they dive for amphibians, fish and aquatic insects in fast-flowing streams, and they do it all while dog paddling and twirling their tails like propellers.

Shrews (and especially shrews of the red-toothed tribe or Soricinae) live in the fast lane, pushing the envelope of energetic possibility.

They have relatively high thermal conductance, which means they are not well insulated, but their compensation for this deficiency is a high basal metabolic rate (BMR) and high body temperature (38.6 degrees C = 101.3 F).

Thus, shrews are fascinating topics of investigation, but as subjects of energetic study they are frustrating in the extreme.

Within the physiologist's metabolic chamber or respirometer, research subjects are supposed to rest peacefully in a state of post prandial quietude as the equipment measures their oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production.

And they should also be "postabsorptive" -- not digesting food -- because digestion has a caloric cost and raises metabolism.

Shrews are not good at this, because they are fussbudgets around the clock and they rest only briefly.

Their basal metabolic rate is so high, that the time it takes for food to pass through the digestive system ('throughput" to physiologists, "poop time" to most readers) is about an hour.

Count yourself blessed if you ever see a water shrew.

You have seen a rare sight -- the world's smallest diver, and one of the faster poopers in the west.

Question: the practitioners of what outdoor recreation have the best chance of seeing water shrews?

Post you answer in the comment section, and speak up if you yourself have seen one in action.

References

Gusztak, R.W. , R.A. MacArthur, and K.L. Campbell. 2005. Bioenergetics and thermal physiology of American water shrews (Sorex palustris). Journal of Comparative Physiology, 175:87-95.

The Showtl's Underworld, Part 3

2011-09-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

Herman the Ermine made but one alarming appearance, August 1 at 12:45AM.

Nine hours later the showtl was back, safe and sound.

Other species find Aplodontia's digs to be popular hangouts.

During a trapping study of Aplodontia burrows in the 1950s, Egbert Pfeiffer caught spotted skunks, long-tailed weasels, an ermine, mink, chickaree, dusky-footed and bushy-tailed woodrats, several species of mouse, and none other than Big Sally -- our Pacific Giant Salamander.

Other field workers added the striped skunk, raccoon, badger, marten, the snowshoe hare, more rodents, the coast mole, and the charismatic shrew mole, another Codger favorite (here's why).

As a meeting place for some intriguing and rarely photographed species, Aplodontia burrows have much to offer.

[Note: I am not absolutely certain this little predator is not a mink -- please speak out if you have a definite opinion.]

References

Pfeiffer, E.W. 1953. Animals trapped in mountain beaver (Aplodontia rufa) runways, and the mountain beaver in captivity. Journal of Mammalogy, 34:396.

Carraway, L.N. and B.J. Verts. 1993. Aplodontia rufa. Mammalian Species No. 431:1-10.

Showtl's Underworld, Part 2

2011-08-31T19:56:00.000-07:00

Six hours after we left, Showtl made its first appearance.

What a difference a month can make during the growing season.

We bumbled about looking for the underground cams.

Alders in full leaf and knee-high grass covered the landmarks we expected, and we fell back on the GPS and Audrey's cognitive map to find the underground cameras.

But showtl didn't let us down.

Our rodent made almost daily appearances, which means the site was probably located near its nest.

Only 21% of 281 exposures however contained animals. The rest were blank images.

Normally we'd blame this on moving vegetation and phantom puffs of hot air which the infra-red sensor can't distinguish from animals, but this doesn't explain false exposures in the showtl's cool burrow.

It is more likely the rodent was zipping back and forth, and the camera was often too slow to get pictures of it.

Despite false exposures, we still got 57 images of our quarry, and what you see here are the best.

What you don't see are the two predators lurking in the tunnel.

They're coming soon.

The Showtl's Underworld

2011-08-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

My obsession with showtls took a new turn this summer.

We attempted our first subterranean camera trap sets.

Two hours later two cameras were positioned to capture photos of the beastie in its underworld.

The showtl's tunnel was squarely in the middle of an alder thicket, and Montana Carl announced his intention to stay clear of alder, which he claimed had taken liberties with his person ever since the first day of the workshop.

In point of fact, springy alder limbs had been goosing all of us.

Making the sets therefore fell on the shoulders of the more agile young folk, while the two codgers sat on the sidelines to kibbitz.

The first task was to find the best location.

Several cave-ins had left gaping holes, much bigger than showtl burrows, that murmured of water and mosquitos within.

"Who's gonna stick their arm down there and take some pictures of the tunnel?"

Seabass volunteered.

The pictures showed us that the tunnel was anything but straight, and passed through a morass of buried timber and roots.

In some places it was an open trench.

Next, we had to decide which cave-in gave the best subterranean perspective.

Snow water had created a small cavern immediately inside one of them.

It was an ideal situation for a camera trap: we could stake the camera and yield right-of-way to passing showtls.

Seabass drove a 1" pipe into the bed of the subway, and lowered the cam on its mount to just above the water.

The afternoon dragged on as we fine-tuned the camera's position, but we were all fluffed up with our cleverness, and for good measure we hurriedly staked a second camera down another chute.

Then we headed back to camp for a well-deserved happy hour.

Camtrappers' rendezvous

2011-08-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

Seabass enters the lair of the bear

Yes, sometimes you find a bear in the den, and sometimes you just look like you found a bear in the den.

Readers of Camera Trap Codger may have forgotten that only a month ago the stalwart class of 2011 deployed their final camera trap sets with remarkable derring-do.

I'm reminding you again, because this week we assembled on the north branch of the Yuba River to gather those cams.

It was a mellow late summer day, not unlike a rendezvous of mountain men.

The difference was that the trappers included three women, there were no Indians, no one bartered beaver pelts for trade goods, and there was no booze.

This latter point was an issue of some regret, as one of the ladies rather convincingly made the point that an alcoholic libation would have been an appropriate conclusion to such a productive day.

Next time.

Despite the aid of GPS we bumbled about finding our sets, but we had a good day and made a good haul.

It's going to take the Codger some time to tabulate the data and ponder the material, and I pen this post to alert you that the next few communications will highlight the results.

And you will not find all of the results here either; some "free trappers" were working the area too.

If you do not subscribe to Nature of a Man and Camera Trapping Campus, shame on you, but be sure to check those blogs by the Codger's trainees.

Their transcendental essays and evocative photos will be well worth your time.

So stay tuned and have patience as we crank out the results.

Rancher cam traps cat chase

2011-08-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

This just up from the Outdoor Pressroom: a cam trap in Nebraska gets a very rare picture.

Wow -- getting photos of puma with prey is rare enough, but getting them in the heat of the chase is very rare indeed.

Roadrunner hits the trail

2011-08-24T20:32:00.000-07:00

"What the hell is that?!"

With suspicion Roadrunner centered the camouflaged box on its fovea.

"Damn, it's a camera trap violating my privacy."

"I'm outta here!"

Two badgers

2011-08-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

American badgers lead a solitary life, which means that most of the time they're loners.

Males and females consort briefly in the summer and early fall, and birth takes place in March and April.

The "mother family" is the most enduring social unit, but the family breaks up in the fall when the young strike out on their own.

This photo of two badgers was taken at the Chimineas Ranch on March 23.

Its hard to say what's going on.

We may be witnessing hanky-panky between consenting adults or an innocent game of "Gotcha" between siblings of last year's litter.

But the photo makes one point clear: one can learn a lot from camera trapping.

This single photo tells us that friendly social interactions take place outside of the seasonal periods of mating and family life.

There's still a lot to learn about the ecology of Striped-face.

Stranger in Paradise

2011-08-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

There's a capybara (or carpincho) living in Steinbeck country.

Hopefully only one.

Striped-Face in a Bluffing Mood

2011-08-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Is this badger's body language telling you anything?

If you think he looks like any other badger, kinda cute and snuggly, look at the next picture.

This is the usual appearance of Striped-face when he encounters a camera trap on the trail.

The animal is composed and attentive, and you might even say he looks curious.

That's how the working badger usually looks when snapped by a camera trap.

What about the badger in the first image -- the one stiffly braced on spread legs and looking as round as a cream puff?

If you still think he looks cute and snuggly I hope you never meet this fellow.

Note that his back is up, and he seems to have raised the hair on the far-side of his body.

That grizzled badger hair so famous for shaving brushes also outlines the creature's contour and shows off its bloated appearance rather nicely.

This is the "broadside display" of a bluffing badger. It's a defensive threat that shows off the animal's size to best advantage.

For badgers it's an unusual reaction to a camera trap.

Old Striped-face may be a tough customer, but he's a rambler who strays far from his burrows, and sometimes he stumbles into hungry predators larger than himself (not to mention the occasional scary camera trap).

That's when bluffing is a good defense.

Reference

Wemmer, C. and Wilson, D.E. 1983. Structure and function of hair crests and capes in African carnivora. In Behavior and Ecology of Mammals, edited by J.F. Eisenberg and D. Kleiman, American Society of Mammalogists, Special Publication Number 7:239-264.

Coyote gets BT Jack

2011-08-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

The coyote caught BT Jack in mid-June, and strolled past the camera 45 minutes before midnight.

BT Jack is the black-tailed jackrabbit; that's how I abbreviate the species in our data tabulations for the Chimineas Ranch.

A 5 lb jack rabbit is a decent meal for a 30 lb coyote, and this coyote seems to have already devoured nearly half of it.

Another coyote happened by but was less composed.

And the bobcat was a bit spooky, though it didn't depart till it had sniffed the bait under the rock.

Camera trap article

2011-08-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

Camera traps seem to be in the news these days, and here's a brief article hot off the press, thanks to Kirk.

A nice selection of photos, almost all of which are IR images.

I liked the giant anteater shot best, but wish the end of his snout wasn't out of the frame.

Striped Face, the cunning Badger

2011-08-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

"The badger was in his hole. Stooping over, the young man shouted: "Oh, cunning striped face! Oh, generous animal! I wish to speak with you."

"What do you want?" said the badger, poking his head out of the hole.

"I want to find the sun's home," replied Scarface. "I want to speak with him."

"I do not know where he lives," replied the badger. "I never travel very far. Over there in the timber is the wolverine. He is always traveling around, and is of much knowledge. Maybe he can tell you."

Striped Face had a cameo role In Blackfoot Indian legend.

On the Chiminea Ranch he also plays bit parts.

He comes and goes, and rarely hangs around for long.

This badger didn't shrink from climbing a steep hill where a fermenting can of cat food beckoned.

The bait was stuffed into a cleft in the outcrop

Striped face visited the set on five occasions and left 13 images.

On his first visit he circled the rock.

It took one circuit and he discovered that the scent came from above.

Apparently he couldn't reach it.

Those stubby legs weren't equal to the task; so he went away.

A couple nights later Striped face came back.

In Blackfoot legend only the wolverine knew that the trail to the Big Water led to the sun.

This badger also seemed to know the sun's home.

Indeed, he seems to have paused a moment to watch it fading beyond the Big Water.

Reference

George Bird Grinnell, 1962. Blackfoot Lodge Tales, The Story of a Prairie People. University of Nebraska Press. [The excerpt comes from the story "Scarface, Origin of the Medicine Lodge"].

Jar head the fox

2011-08-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Bill W. for sending this story with a happy ending.

Errant gopher

2011-08-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

It's not a very good picture of a gopher, and I am not even sure of the species.

It could be the montane pocket gopher, but I suspect it's the common garden variety -- Botta's pocket gopher. Both occur in the area.

Yes, we are still at the Aplodontia burrow in the thicket beside the Yuba River.

I am posting the photo because camera trapping a pocket gopher is a rare event.

At night gophers do move about above ground, especially when dispersing from their natal range, or the land of their birth.

That's when the barn owls pick them off, and judging from the abundance of pocket gopher remains in owl pellets, there's a awful lot of nocturnal gopher traffic above ground.

Apparently this gopher succumbed to wanderlust too, and Bill's camera captured three images of it when it stumbled into the showtl burrow.

In the last photo it is heading in the opposite direction.

A Princely Mouse

2011-08-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

The Western jumping mouse (Zapus princeps) is a good looking rodent.

It's two-toned body trim, yellow sides, and long tail are distinctive features, and it befuddles its predators by jumping like a grasshopper.

It's the jumping mouse of the mountains, usually found along creeks and drainages. Its relative, the Pacific jumping mouse is coastal in distribution.

This fellow made an appearance at the Aplodontia burrow staked out by Bill.

My first encounter with the Western jumping mouse was in June 1962 on the Little Truckee River in the Tahoe National Forest.

School was out, and four of us, three budding biologists and a geologist escaped into the northern Sierra Nevada to do some collecting.

Here's what I wrote in my field notes:

"I set 15 traps (2 rat and 13 museum specials) . . . in a marshy area beside the river -- I thought I might get some shrews."

"The two rat traps I set near burrows on the 'sagey' slope across the river."

"The next morning we woke up at 7:30. I picked ip my traps and then ate breakfast."

"I caught 4 jumping mice -- an entirely new genus for me (Zapus)."

"I skinned them out and then we ate lunch."

"After lunch I decided to do a little cicada collecting . . ."

7:30!! What a bunch of lazy butts. I might note that we had trouble boiling the noodles the night before and didn't eat dinner until 11:00.

We might have been drinking beer, too.

Ah, the sweet days of youth.

Marten at dawn

2011-08-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

Day was breaking when the marten caught a faint but familiar scent of squirrel and followed its nose to a old fallen red fir.

That's where it discovered the camera trap that periodically flashed in the dim light.

But the camera didn't detract it from its goal.

It soon discovered that the squirrel was deep beneath a huge splinter of sap wood.

It squeezed down into the gap and seized the prize.

A week later a large male marten crossed the log.

Perhaps the scent of squirrel and marten still lingered.

Toxic rats

2011-08-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

This is why rats are so fascinating -- though their body plan is similar, they aren't really all the same.

Read about toxo-rat's chemical defense here and here

It proves a point: if you are a big and slow, you better have good defenses.

Thanks to Richard in Lampang and Michael aka Moth Catcher for the links.

Class of 2011

2011-08-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

(left to right) JR Blair (SNFC Director), Audrey Nickles, Lissa Derugin, Bill Wilson (SNFC alumnus), Chris "Codger" Wemmer, Sebastian "Seabass" Kennerknecht, and Carl "Montana" Hansen"

The class was small, but when the goal is teaching, small is beautiful.

Monday morning started with a lecture on camera trap sets, followed by a field demonstration on making a set (i.e., selecting of a site and positioning the camera).

Seabass demonstrates his set using
a DSLR and external flashes

After that, the class made their own sets and I kibbitzed.

That afternoon we started checking the camera traps set last month.

Back in June five of last year's class joined me in setting cams for the workshop.

So instead of the 4-5 cams I usually set by myself, we had 12 cams waiting for us.

We puffed our way up a hill to a log set among red firs, and we found a long series of pine marten photos waiting for us.

My old buddy Carl suggested I'd "cooked the results".

Those two photogenic martens had posed superbly, and I did lay it on rather thick as I scoped out each successive shot.

In addition to the daily routine of exploration, and setting and checking cams, we spent the evenings re-hacking one of Carl's cameras, photographing flying squirrels at a feeder, and getting the analog-digital converter to work with my new "gopher cam".

We'll talk about the latter -- a "burrow scope" for snooping in tree cavities and underground dens -- in a future post.

Carl got the Codger's "gopher cam" working.

Later in the week we forded the North Yuba at a log jam to explore the wonders of talus and giant red firs.

"Okay, troops, tell me the size of this tree".

Earlier in the week we had measured one with a 15 foot circumference, so again I dug the tape measure out of my pack.

This one measured in at 17 feet, and the two best guesstimates were only off by a foot.

Seabass then drew our attention to a cavity on the other side of the old veteran.

It was a respectable cavity with a vertical hollow of unknown length.

There was enough space in there for a coyote or even a few bear cubs.

A perfect cone of frass inside announced an infestation of wood ants, but as ants go they were friendlies,

We all agreed it was a good place to set a camera.

The class conferred on what kind of set to make, and settled on a Jonah set (in the whale's belly).

Lissa crawled in, set the cam, and took a self portrait.

In a few weeks we'll have a camtrappers' rendezvous to see if anything visits the hollow in the old giant, or if the showtls passed our subterranean cams.

A camera trapping pioneer

2011-08-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a great article about Hobart Vosburg Roberts, a camera trapping pioneer, and one that I had not encountered in my research on the topic.

Thanks to J. of CougarMagic fame for the link.

Herman the Ermine was alurkin'

2011-07-31T12:48:00.000-07:00

Herman the Ermine after cropping

"Study your photos carefully", is my codgerly counsel to novice camera trappers. "Its easy to miss the little guys."

As I gleefully reviewed Bill's showtl pictures the other day I failed to notice Herman the Ermine lurking in the background.

This afternoon Herman finally caught my eye.

Here's the uncropped photo, taken two and a half minutes before Showtl appears in its burrow.

Herman the Ermine before cropping

It could have been a close shave.

We've gotten three photos of weasels (long- and short-tails) in the North Yuba watershed, and they've all been in Aplodontia colonies.

This got me to wondering.

How does the showtl avoid or fend off fatal encounters with predators that can enter their burrows?

Does it have any anti-predator ploys?

You just don't see earth-blocked burrows in showtl colonies.

They don't have the pocket gopher's compulsive burrow-plugging habit which seems to hold many predators at bay.

In fact, from the number of burrow openings you'd think they had an open-door policy with weasels.

Here's a sketch of the burrow system and openings from Charles Camp's study of Aplodontia in 1916.

The strange reality is that showtl knows how to block burrows, but reserves the measure for its underground leaf and root pantries.

Camp wrote,

"A singular habit has been noticed in connection with the storage of food. In a burrow excavated at Point Reyes the entrances of two of the food storehouses were found plugged with large pellets of earth evidently manufactured by the animal for this purpose. These earthen balls were one to two inches in diameter and very hard and dry, evidently from being handled a good deal. It is curious that the outer burrow entrances are not similarly plugged."

Here's a hypothesis.

Short sections of water-filled tunnels, a water seal of sorts, may bar weasels from entering the showtls nest cavity.

Camp didn't describe such water seals, but if we examined more burrows we might find that they exist.

The problem is that recreational burrow-diggers are hard to find these days.

But one thing is certain. The weasel that nails a showtl is well fed for several days.

An adult showtl outweighs an adult male long-tailed weasel by a factor of 3 or 4.

Herman the Ermine is 1/16th the size of the rodent, so the windfall of flesh would be much greater.

But do ermines take down showtls?

I suspect so, at least young ones.

An ermine is a fierce little killer, and if it can wrap its jaws around the showtl's throat the struggle would be brief.

Showtl emerged 2.5 minutes after Herman moved through

References

Camp, C.L. 1918. Excavations of burrows of the rodent Aplodontia, with observations on the habits of the animal. University of California Publications in Zoology, 17(18):517-536.

Spring cleaning

2011-07-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

We descended on the alder thicket on the Yuba River back in June-- a band of eager camera trappers hungry for photos of the enigmatic but endearing showtl.

When it comes to camera trapping, showtl seems to be on the bashful side.

You have to wait a week or more before the adorable head with humanoid ears pokes out of the burrow.

But this time Bill Wilson got a nice series of showtl pictures over a period of two weeks.

This animal's watery burrow had an apron of knuckle sized rocks, and as you can see in these stitched photos, those rocks weren't washed out by water.

Showtl was doing its spring cleaning, while the plants were growing like crazy.

I wonder how much gold the showtls have unearthed since the 49ers?

Thanks Bill, for letting me show your catch.

Sunrise showtl

2011-07-24T16:05:00.000-07:00

Dawn chorus and showtl appears
in scattered light of frond and leaf
Through the firs sunlight breaks

As Codger followers by now realize, I am just back from a week at SF State University's Sierra Nevada Field Station, where images of showtls have moved me to feeble attempts at poetic expression.

The class discovered their camera-trapping instructor was obsessed with the showtl, and if you don't know anything about mountain beavers, sewellels, showtls or Aplodontia rufa, read here.

And by the way, this image was the first attempt at showtl espionage by the ladies of the class.

I'd say they did pretty well.

As I wind down and unpack, I'll be working up the images.

More on the workshop this week, and thanks to Carl for photoshopping this problematic image.

(Now I am off to the flume where I lost my glasses this afternoon.)

Young fluffies

2011-07-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

We baited this set for small carnivores of the four-legged warm-blooded variety, and that's what we got.

But in addition a pair of young fluffies showed up and used the rocks as a perch.

They seem to be finishing their molt.

As Hans Peeters remarked in Field Guide to the Owls of California and the West, juvenile western screech owls have a loose-feathered look until they molt into their adult plumage.

It's that young fluffy look that makes immature owls so appealing.

Bob-tailed possum

2011-07-12T21:01:00.000-07:00

Ever surprised an opossum?

If so, you watched it trundle away at a leisurely pace.

When a possum beats a hasty retreat it is not a feat of swiftness, because Br'er Possum is neither built nor wired for speed.

The books that cite 7 kilometers per hour as the opossum's max don't mention that Possum probably never has to go all-out for a mile.

If overtaken by a pursuer Possum plays possum.

Collapsing, drooling profusely, evacuating bladder, colon and anal gland is no small feat of physiological multi-tasking.

The hungry predator doesn't have to fight for dinner, because dinner appears to be close to death.

Lying there with that silly grin, Possum blithely faces death with the far-off stare of a meditating yogi; indeed its respiration and heart rate decrease.

But the summation of the stimuli emanating from this hot heap of flesh is enough to make at least some predators lose their appetite.

Playing possum however is an anti-predator ploy that develops with time.

It is not in the weanling possum's bag of tricks, at least not in its full-blown manifestation.

That may explain why the little guy in the picture is missing its tail.

Whatever happened, it was lucky to get away.

Reference

Gabrielson, G. W. and E. N. Smith. 1985. Physiological responses associated with feigned death in the American opossum. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica, 123(4):393–398.

The number 6 grizz catcher

2011-07-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

Grizz traps -- god-awful devices and troubling reminders of the past.

Gone are California's grizzlies, and gone are the absent-minded vaqueros who undoubtedly stumbled into those gaping jaws of steel hidden in the chaparral.

And woe betide any latter day codgers who play Russian roulette with such deadly toys.

Have you noticed that those springs are wired open?

Well, that's why. Codgers and teen age boys are attracted to such things.

According to A.R.Harding's Project Gutenberg EBook of Steel Traps:

"This is known as the No. 6 or Grizzly Bear Trap and has a spread of jaws of 16 inches. It weighs complete, 42 pounds. This is the strongest trap made. The manufacturers say they have never heard of anything getting out of it when once caught. It is often called 'the Great Bear Tamer.'"

The treadle in the Ebook was simply labeled "No. 6", but this particular one was also stamped with the name of our extinct state mammal:

My friend Paul -- proud owner of a Lickety Splitter, collector of old gadgets, old bottles, old Italian sports cars, and antique tractors among other things -- found it recently at a swap meet.

We get together twice a year, and since we inevitably talk of old things I always ask if he's found any grizz traps.

It's kind of a joke, but damned if he didn't find one, buy it, and give me right of first refusal.

The problem was this -- where do you put a grizz trap?

So I tactfully posed the question.

"Don't you think it would add a wonderful touch of frontier California to the patio?"

The redhead didn't agree.

And so I wistfully demurred.

"No problem," said Paul, "I can always find a buyer or swap it for something else."

But he agreed to hold onto it until I stopped by to take some pictures.

A month later we spent a fine day together, and I could tell he was growing fond of the Number 6.

"At our age," he reflected, "you have to decide what you don't need, and what you want to own when you die."

"I think I may just keep it."

"There's a screw-clamp that came with those traps," he continued, "to clamp the springs and open the jaws."

steel trap setting clamp

"I've seen a few for sale, but I never knew what they were."

"I may get one of those too."

A memento of Alta California -- a 42 lb contrivance of spring steel, forged in Massachusetts 130 years ago, shipped to California, forgotten in someone's shed --- has found a new home.

The rest of No. 6's story we will never know.

Ocelot cam-trapped in AZ

2011-07-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

Some hunters were cam-trapping in Cochise County, Arizona and got a picture of an ocelot.

You can find the link and other wildlife news items at Outdoor Pressroom, and the article here.

A sore nose

2011-07-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

At least two raccoons muddied their paws at the beaver drag, and this one is missing a chunk of its nose.

I am sure it hurts a lot more than those ticks on its ears..

This is clearly a wound and not a runny nose or a natural discoloration and deformity.

Maybe it was acquired in a scrape with another coon, or maybe Br'er Coon's dinner fought back.

By comparison, this young fellow shows what a healthy nose should look like.

Mouse mischief

2011-07-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

While the codger was in the field a couple weeks ago the redhead was being a dutiful wife cruising around town in our 20 year old Honda and running errands.

When I got home however she reported somewhat emphatically that she was finished with the Honda.

The story unfolded that our beloved Accord had "gone Nascar".

On her way home it revved mightily and bolted like a race horse

She managed to get it into neutral and pulled over with the engine roaring.

Fortunately a number of gentlemen stopped to offer help, and one of them de-jammed the throttle.

"I'm not getting in that thing anymore", she said.

I started the car up expecting a wild horse ride, but it purred like a kitten, and no amount of foot play could get the throttle to jam.

But my assurances didn't change the redhead's mind, so I took the car to our mechanic and explained the problem.

A day later he handed me a plastic bag filled with acorns and stuffing from the car seats, along with a rodent-chewed air filter.

In all likelihood, he said, some mouse debris had temporarily jammed the throttle.

The redhead still wants nothing to do with it.

Comings and goings of Justin Beaver

2011-06-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

The opening in the vegetation is a beaver drag.

It's a trail between water and a beaver's foraging area, and I want you to know that I crawled down that hole to get to the creek.

I learned my lesson last December when someone pilfered my camera at a much more obvious beaver drag.

After that bothersome incident I periodically heard a commanding voice (I think it was Charlton Heston) saying "Don't set your camera at a beaver drag that other yokels can use as a path to the water".

In other words, pick a place, and preferably a muddy place where you have to get on your hands and knees and crawl.

The location of this drag was a blackberry patch overhanging a bank.

Beaver sign told me they climbed up the bank through this vegetative tunnel and crossed a dirt road to reach a willow thicket.

I checked the place out, and was climbing out of the tunnel when I tripped and fell backwards into the briar patch.

I found myself suspended like a fly in the web making feeble limb movements and thinking I was getting too damn old to be a stuntman.

"It's not just your age", I told myself, "any fool in this situation would be challenged to get out."

The problem wasn't just thorny punishment to body movement.

My legs and butt were higher than my head, and I couldn't reach benign vegetation to right myself.

I studied the warp and woof of the tangled briars, then rolled over slightly, found some smooth woody stems, and delicately climbed out and removed the thorns from hands and pants.

It was a humbling experience, but I went to the car, donned my pack and crawled back down to the creek to set the camera.

121 photos were waiting for me 6 weeks later.

Justin (or was it Justine) made 6 visits and left 16 pictures.

One to ten minutes separated his comings and goings.

Sometimes he came several times without going, and went several times without coming.

Justin was obviously using more than one route to and from the willow thicket.

I won't forget this place, but I decided to pull the cams and give the Sac Valley wetlands a break.

Faux woodpecker granary

2011-06-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

The faux granary log has not been a smashing success with the local California Acorn Woodpeckers, but it's not like they ignore it either.

I took this picture back in the spring, when the redhead was kind enough to call the woodpeckers to my attention.

Actually, I had pretty much forgotten the experiment, but my wife had not.

She had esthetic concerns about the granary log's contribution of our patio decor.

The granary does attract woodpeckers now and then, but it is not an irresistible attraction.

It needs improvement, like a few robotic decoys that periodically tap and go rukka- rukka.

And it should be a lot bigger and hollow with a diversion chute at the bottom so you can harvest bushels of acorns.

We have bird friendly coffee, but how about bird-harvested acorns stone milled to flour?

The challenge would be shelling, blanching, and milling this wholesome product.

Birders would seem a logical source of volunteer labor, but let's face it, they're too easily distracted.

It may sound like a hair-brained scheme, but think sea monkeys and pet rocks, or Douglas fir needle tea.

If it could happen anywhere, Californian would be the place.

The call of the high country

2011-06-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

Christian finishes his log set.

The high country was calling, "get off your butt and set some cams -- the camera trapping workshop is only a month away".

So the codger spent a day in Sierra County in good company -- "graduates" from last year's Camera Trapping Workshop plus friends.

The northern Sierra still has plenty of snow.

Forest Service roads weren't always passable; snow drifts were thick on the north slopes.

And the Yuba River wasn't fordable by the usual routes and means: rock-hopping, wading, or crossing fallen logs.

The high country in Eldorado County, where I found more mountain beaver habitat this weekend.

That didn't stop us; we put out a record number of cameras in several habitats.

We GPS'd each set because in only 4-weeks the growth spurt of grass and Delphiniums will drastically change the appearance of each location.

I was pleased to observe that the guys learned their camera trapping lessons well and gained a great deal of experience on their own this past year.

Now they're pushing the envelope for camera trapping creativity.

What you can't see in the picture above is that Christian's camera trap is only 12 feet or so above the whitewater!

Okay, I'm joshing.

But in a few weeks when the drifts melt there'll be a lot more water flowing under his lofty perch.

And for other high jinks and discoveries from last weekend check Camera Trapping Campus.

Following her nose

2011-06-21T16:55:00.000-07:00

Asiatic wild dog, bamboo forest, Rakhine Yoma, Myanmar: May 5, 2011

UMA's photo of a dhole or Asiatic wild dog (Cuon alpinus) was taken during the elephant survey in Rakhine Yoma Elephant Sanctuary.

I saw my first dhole in Nepal in the late 1970s while taking a late afternoon stroll near Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge with Hemanta Mishra and the late wildlife photographer Dieter Plage.

I asked Plage why he was taking his movie camera. It was huge, clearly a burden, and we were only on a dusty jeep track killing some time before happy hour.

His reply was something to the effect that you encounter wildlife when you least expect it, and he wanted to be ready for the unexpected.

Five minutes later a dhole paused at the edge of the road and Plage started filming. It trotted across the road and two more followed it.

He had made his point.

A couple years later my colleagues the Mishras and Sunquists were with me in India's Kanha National Park.

We were on elephant back when we stumbled on a sambar doe -- just killed.

The ranger advised us to come back in a half hour, and when we arrived the wild dogs were feeding. Only bones were left the next morning.

In February 1995 we were beginning a radio-telemetry study of Burmese brow-antlered deer in Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary, Myanmar.

When the radio-tracking team returned to camp that evening they were excited.

One doesn't witness large mammal predation in forested habitats, but they had just encountered a pack of three taw kway or wild dogs hunting on the ridge above camp.

First an exhausted and gasping muntjac labored by within yards of the radio-trackers.

Then, moments later three wild dogs ran right into the trackers.

They stopped in their tracks to stare at the people, who wasted no time scaring them off.

I started to plan for a wild dog study, bought radio-transmitters, and we engaged a professional trapper from the US to teach the research team how to live-trap wild dogs.

We caught jackals and civets and never saw another wild dog in the park.

Nor did we get any reports of them from villagers.

The taw kway had left the wildlife sanctuary and vanished somewhere in the plains between the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin.

Seedy bear with the right tools

2011-06-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

Chimineas Ranch, October, 2010.

We stuffed a punctured can of cat food down into a crack in the log, and a seedy black bear found it 16 days later.

It was 2:45 in the morning.

In no time Bruin located the bait precisely. and put its tools to work.

Two minutes later it ripped the wood back, and exposed the can.

It had the right tools, but it didn't know how to use them to open the can.

I've seen captive Himalayan bears open the snap top on a can of pop with one claw.

This bear was equipped to do just that, but gave up and left the can where it found it.

The visit lasted 5 minutes.

An idle bear in a cage of course will spend endless hours solving the problem of opening a snap top can.

A delectable though minute haunch

2011-06-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

"The light was fading, and she was roasting a woodrat for her evening meal. She gave me one of the minute hindquarters, and I never tasted anything so delicious."

The quote is from Carobeth Laird's biographical "Encounter with an Angry God", about a field trip to the headwaters of the Tule River in the southern Sierra Nevada.

The year was 1917, and Laird was assisting her husband John Peabody Harrington record the dying languages of the California Indians.

Harrington was driven, obsessive, and eccentric.

He didn't want WWI to interrupt his life's work, so pleaded with his young wife to back the model T over his leg so he could avoid the draft.

That saying that no man on his deathbed regrets that he didn't spend more time at work didn't apply to Harrington.

When he died in 1961 his professional estate of field notes, recordings, artifacts, some mummified birds, old shirts, and half-eaten sandwiches weighed in at 6 tons.

A dry wash channel set

2011-06-14T21:20:00.000-07:00

Dry washes are the country roads of four-footed arid land drifters, and good places to set camera traps.

They're fickle places, though, especially in winter, when a rumbling wash of mud, gravel, and cobbles can sweep your beloved cam away. Forever.

The channel in the rock sediments seen here is a promising but unusual feature.

We all walked right on through the gap, realized its uniqueness, and got a little jazzed about it.

Practically every mammal bigger than a rat will be obliged to pass through that channel, just as we did.

Take a look at the top of the page again, and you'll see a couple of rocks at the bottom of the channel.

There's a smelly treat under that stone, so we're expecting passersby to pause for a sniff before resuming their journeys.

That will give the camera time to capture their photo IDs.

Too yucky for pictures

2011-06-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

Nature can inspire and Nature can gross you out.

When the redhead summoned me this morning she was holding something in a tissue.

It looked like a shiny gray grape.

Except the grape had legs, and they were waving feebly.

It was a bloated tick -- perhaps the American dog tick, but given the course of events I will never know for sure.

"I found it on the carpet!" said my wife.

Now I want to make one thing perfectly clear.

I'm an attentive dog owner. I check the dog for ticks every day, and observe his scratching and grooming patterns.

When I pluck a tick from Fred's hide he can't wait to sniff it.

In his dog-mind the smell of the tick is proof that the discomfort of its removal wasn't just another human trick. (Well, that's my reading of it.)

I was wondering how Fred could have nourished this bloated thing for at least a week without my notice, when the redhead asked, "How can I kill it?"

A vial of alcohol seemed advisable, but before I could articulate my thought I witnessed a surreal moment of life in slow motion.

She gave the tick the big squeeze, and I could hear my voice echoing,

"D O N ' T D O T H A T. . . ."

It was too late.

The tick exploded, the redhead yelped, and a black glob of semi-digested dog blood spattered her throat.

It was like a scene from The Godfather.

The tick was no longer a suitable specimen, and I called out to her as she hurried to the sink:

"Couldn't you wait till I got a picture of it?"

About to leap

2011-06-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

Not much to say, except I wish the camera had taken this photo a half second (or so) later.

Pulled in two directions

2011-06-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

Day 3

By the time Coyote showed up at set 421, Gray Fox had paid 7 visits and left 27 images.

I have no way of knowing exactly how many foxes Gray Fox happens to be, but suspect there are two look-alikes, a couple, in this corner of Chimineas.

But back to Coyote.

His first visit was brief. He looked at the camera, it flashed, and he was gone.

Caution, suspicion, fear, neophobia -- call it what you like -- it ushered him away.

Day 7

On his second visit, 4 days later, his decided to leave before the suspicious thing flashed.

Day 21

But 2 weeks later he was back.

He studied the suspicious thing long enough for it to flash, but when that happened he didn't hang around.

Day 28

Coyote made another appearance seven days later.

This time the camera was a stronger lure than the bait.

He needed to know more about the suspicious thing.

When the flash went off he played it safe.

He decided to leave Dodge City to braver souls like Gray Fox, who by this time had left 54 photos of his visits and scent-marking shenanigans.

Day 34

On day 34 however Coyote once again found himself drawn to the increasingly tempting stench from under the rock.

He was savoring that smell when the suspicious thing flashed and ended his reverie, but once again he escaped unscathed.

Day 57: 8:49:56

Finally, on day 57 Coyote stood his ground for over a minute.

He discovered that the suspicious thing was only a bluffer.

Its flash was harmless.

He sniffed the fascinating but fading balm with impunity.

The camera captured 4 images as he alternately sniffed and regarded the suspicious but harmless thing.

Day 57, 8:50:16

Day 57, 8:51:09

Day 57: last photo -- 8:51:29

The camera trap took pictures for 108 days.

Coyote left 12 photos during 7 visits, and Gray fox left 62 photos during 22 visits.

Two MOs.

If the suspicious thing had been dangerous, there's a good chance Gray Fox would be gone, and Coyote would still be around.

Pay attention to your enemy

2011-06-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

Set 421 at the Chimineas Ranch-- an eroded outcrop hidden by a patch of holly leaf cherry -- was an interesting crossroad.

It was there that a flock of chukars paused to roost in the trees, and bobcats left their calling cards.

But let's not fool ourselves; the attraction to the mammals was the bait (a punctured can of cat food) and the scent lures -- your garden variety fish emulsion and a butterscotch-scented concoction imaginatively named "green death".

They summoned gray fox, coyote, bobcat, and wood rat and deer mouse.

Here we see Br'er fox sniffing the lure while wood rat watches in the background.

Smart rat.

The wood rat that doesn't pay attention becomes dinner.

On only three occasions have we camera trapped these two species together, and the rats hadn't paid attention.

Consequently, they were limp or missing body parts.

Back to the ranch

2011-05-31T13:43:00.000-07:00

11:08PM -- "Hornly" the resident hooter confronts brazen plastic imposter.

It was good to get back to 'the Chimineas'.

Nearly 7 months has passed since my last visit, and a lot happened during the long winter.

More than once the storms had reclaimed the ranch's roads as gullies and washes.

Then it would dry up a bit, and thinking the worse was over Cowman Ross would start to grade -- until another storm rolled in with vengeance.

When spring halfheartedly arrived Craig and the team camera trapped the accessible areas near the ranch house.

We spent the first night reviewing a grant proposal, transferring backlogged photo files, and checking cameras (3 more were out of commission).

For dinner we threw together a clam pasta prepared by the redhead.

Craig observed that it didn't taste much like clams, and I had to agree, though I'll allow that a second beer might have compromised my ability to discern the delicate essence of bivalves.

We turned in early, but as for the coyote serenade, I have nothing to report. It was too cold to sleep with the door and windows open.

We set cameras the next morning in a new canyon and found a fairly large sandstone cave.

That afternoon RandonTruth and Craig's assistant Heather rolled in, and we enjoyed our reunion over grilled chicken burritos.

I was ready to test my automatic owl caller in the field, but the 15 minute cycle of the 3 v motor (a lavatory air freshener donated by neighbor Richard) wasn't performing as it had the day before.

The plunger on the air freshener didn't start the CD player.

This was a disappointment, as the local pair of great horned owls (GHOs) had just fledged their young within walking distance of the ranch house.

Fortunately RandomTruth is a man of the modern era.

He quickly copied the owl calls from my CD to his IPod, inserted pauses, and it worked like a charm.

The modern owl caller (left) and my Rube Goldberg owl caller.

After dinner we wired my hooter decoy to a stump near the nest tree, hid the IPod and speaker beneath it, and set up a couple of cameras nearby.

My cam was also on the fritz, but fortunately RandomTruth's home brewed camera trap caught the action-- thanks Ken.

Here's what happened with his photos.

The resident GHO, presumably the male (who we will call Hornly) arrived at the stump at 11:08 PM -- 2 hours after the decoy boldly announced its intrusion into the breeding territory.

With cocked tail and wings a-hanging he had a rather ruffled if not disturbed presence.

And perhaps he noticed that the puny offender had an uncanny ventriloquistic ability.

11:10 PM -- Hornly looks in the direction of the call.

There were no photos of an aerial strike or a wing-flapping attempt to mount, but 50 minutes later Hornly felled the brazen imposter.

12:45 AM -- after Hornly's first strike.

The vanquished hooter however refused to retreat and continued to announce its presence as if nothing had happened.

Hornly apparently struck again and the camera captured him hooting in victory.

1:36 AM -- Tail up and head bowed -- Hornly is probably hooting in victory over his plastic foe.

And so begins another promising season of camera trapping on the Chimineas.

If we get our grant, we will start a new experiment to test survey methodology.

And one last thing, as I packed up the morning of my departure I found a can of clams in my grocery bag.

I immediately recalled Craig's wistful observation about the unclammy flavor of the clam sauce, and laughed uproariously .

And you won't believe this, but it is true.

When I carried the Rube Goldberg owl caller to the car it started to play.

Wolverine in motion

2011-05-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

Alert to camera trap nuts -- this footage of the Oregon wolverine is waiting for all of you Gulo enthusiasts to enjoy.

Nest cam update

2011-05-22T19:23:00.000-07:00

Richards 6 titmice are ready to fledge at 21 days.

We watched them on his TV monitor today.

The most rambunctious of the clutch kept flying up to the hole to peek out, and everytime it dropped back into the nest its siblings went into a frenzy of begging and wing flapping-- obviously mistaking it for a parent.

My screech owl box was appropriated by a pair of northern flickers about 2 weeks ago.

The seventh egg appeared yesterday between 9 and 10 AM.

Today one of the eggs disappeared. I presume it was damaged and the hen disposed of it.

I expect she'll get serious incubation very soon.

The fluttering sound in the attic

2011-05-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

The rescued attic owl in the butterfly net.

[I recently recovered these pictures from a broken hard drive, and this is their story.]

I had dismissed my wife's suspicion that something was fluttering in the attic.

You see, I'm supposed to be the one with better hearing, but she's the one who's always hearing things.

"Listen," she said, "There it is again."

And she was right. Something was fluttering up there.

I got the ladder and a flashlight and climbed up into the attic's furnace-like heat.

There I traced the mysterious noise to a narrow corner where a rather pathetic looking screech owl had become wedged.

It was impossible to reach it.

If you recall Colonel Nicholson's grimy and sodden appearance after his time out in the hot box -- I'm talking about Alec Guinness in Bridge over the River Kwai -- well, that was me.

Sweating and covered with insulation I crabbed my way down the ladder and stumbled to the sink to rehydrate.

But time was limited -- it was a miracle the owl wasn't yet cooked.

It had to be close to heat stroke.

I returned to the attic with butterfly net, and it was easy work.

The hyperventilating bird had enough strength to flip on its back and grabbed the net with its sharp little mouse squeezers.

Back in the kitchen it looked like road kill, but it guzzled water freely, and I placed the quenched bird in the shade next to the garage.

An hour later it flew to a higher perch where it dozed until dusk.

I think the little guy made it. There were no owl feathers to be found the next morning,

How did it get in the attic?

It mistook a terra cotta ventilation tube under the eaves for a suitable daytime retreat.

The chicken wire bird-and-bat filter had fallen from the tube earlier that week.

This was the event that launched my winter pastime as a builder of owl boxes.

Rediscovered or Ignored for 113 years?

2011-05-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Bill Wilson for the heads up on the latest mammalian rediscovery -- the red-crested tree rat, a handsome rodent with the elegant moniker of Santamartamys rufodorsalis.

Somehow I doubt that mammalogists have been combing the forests of Colombia for the past 113 years searching for Santamartamys, but that doesn't detract from the excitement of the find.

There are quite a few species in Latin America known from a handful of specimens collected long ago, and it's always good news to find they are still orbiting through space with the rest of us.

Curious, hungry, or angry?

2011-05-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

You have viewed your camera trap pictures and find that 18 of 27 images are of whiskers and a furry out-of-focus face.

What do you conclude, good reader?

Most folks would allow that the animal noticed the camera, and that it was sufficiently curious to examine it.

Here's the curious animal with those whiskers.

To give you an idea of the distance separating "stage" and camera, here's the set up with Fred giving perspective.

Wood rats and even the lowly opossum react to camera traps by getting up close and personal.

Bears sometimes take the camera apart, and elk have been known to lick and slobber them out of focus.

Camera botherers don't just react to the thing that flashes in the night. They also react to cameras in daylight that don't flash.

Folks are inclined to attribute different motives to camera-curious mammals depending on popular belief.

A camera-curious possum is vaunted as a genius of its kind, an elk is credited only for its acute sense of smell, and a camera-ripping bear is seen as an angry victim making even the score with the insulting flash.

I have to take my share of the blame for embellished interpretation, but in fact, I believe that simple curiosity drives most mammals to examine camera traps they encounter in the woods.

Of course, there are differences among and within species in that mysterious realm of subjective phenomena.

But the measurable difference between species is in what it takes to satisfy their camera-curiosity.

The elk sniffs, tastes, and thrashes the camera with the antlers, while the bear opens it and takes it apart with claws, jaws, and teeth.

The wood rat is equally bold, but satisfies its curiosity by looking and sniffing.

Given enough time, however, I wouldn't be surprised if wood rat gnawed a few holes in it.

Two different bears

2011-05-15T12:40:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago two bears made an appearance at a camera near the house.

The cinnamon-colored bear was well-groomed and muscular, and the pictures tell me it had a calm but cautious presence.

If this was Scruffy, whom I encountered several years ago as a cub, she had grown into a fine specimen of womanhood.

Blackie on the other hand had a clownish bearing.

The camera was attached to the tree with a bungie cord and armed with a spiked bear guard.

Cinnamon approached and examined it with an inquisitive look.

The camera's position didn't change, so I know Cinnamon didn't touch it.

Blackie also examined the cam.

It pawed the camera and tipped it toward the ground, and the cam snapped three pictures.

The spiked bear guard did its job, so no damage was done.

But the interesting thing is the different way the bears reacted to the cam.

Maybe it as just a difference in mood or hunger, but animals differ in disposition.

Maybe they just have different MOs.

Rescue practice

2011-05-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

Blogger needed emergency rescue yesterday.

While their engineers geeked madly to get it going again, and bloggers like yours truly were harboring unkind thoughts, our local rescue squad whacked into view down slope from the house.

The chopper hauled a long line attached to a coffin-like litter.

OMG -- was I witnessing a human drama?

The vultures were also out in full force. Was there a corpse down there in the manzanita?

Grabbed the camera, tripod, telescope (and a cold beer) and hurried outside.

The pilot lowered a coffin-like litter into a clearing; the hovering chopper descended to within 50 feet of the ground, and then rotated.

Someone climbed half way out of the cabin -- apparently peeking down.

Then the chopper ascended and headed down the canyon. As the coffin turned I could see it was empty.

It was just practice, and they practiced in the same place all afternoon.

Late in the night Blogger was working again, but they are still trying to recover lost posts.

I was lucky -- I only lost a few comments to the previous post.

Never forget your wedding date

2011-05-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

The codger held forth at an event for a worthy cause last weekend.

The subject of course was camera trapping, with some illustrated biographical recollections of how zoological obsession took hold of an otherwise normal yours truly.

The event took place at the very church where the redhead and the codger took the sacred vows of matrimony nearly 45 years ago.

I was actually preaching from the pulpit of the church when a slide popped up of the dazzling redhead and the boy-codger at the alter.

Since there was a chronological series of events I had posted the year of the wedding next to the blissful photo.

Now you won't believe it, -- well, if you know me, you will believe it . . . but I didn't get the year right, and the redhead piped up in the audience to set the record straight.

Everyone knew the redhead was right, so I played the fool, and the laugh was on me.

(PS--The redhead just read this, and informed me, "You didn't play the fool, you were the fool." I tell you, its tough being a camera trap codger.)

Corpse in the nest box

2011-05-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

Neighbor Richard's titmice are nesting again and he and his Mrs have been viewing the family life daily on their TV monitor. (They're using the same Harbor Freight set up I was using for the screech owl).

I've been remiss in maintaining my own titmouse box.

It's been hanging by a thread of weathered bungie cord since last fall, swaying in the breeze.

Believing it was unsuitable and abandoned, I took it down for repair on May Day.

Pried it open in the garage, and to my surprise found 6 warm eggs.

I got another surprise when I put my glasses on.

The mound of fluff next to the entrance was a mummified titmouse.

Makes you wonder.

Did it die last winter or early this year?

Did the surviving member of the pair take another mate? Or are they a new couple?

The only thing we know for sure is that a dead conspecific didn't deter the new pair from getting on with nesting.

I repaired the box (without the use of hammer), and as the resident pair chirped nearby I secrured it to the live oak in the potting shed.

[May 4 update -- all is well -- the titmice are brooding.]

Unexpected rat of marsh and swamp

2011-05-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

Sacramento Valley farmers call them rice rats, a fitting but incorrect name for a rodent associated with rice fields.

True rice rats (genus Oryzomys) are natives of the southern US and beyond into South America.

Most likely these guys are Norway rats, stowaways from Asia that arrived with Spaniards and English seafarers.

In this neck of the Sac Valley they are abundant and at home in water and on land.

Many times I've glimpsed them in the beams of head lights on the road shoulder.

And I've flushed many a barn owl there too, which leads me to speculate that the rats may be a fatal attraction and one reason why Barny takes so many hits on the roads.

From our camera trapping results I can tell you that these rats also live in the riparian woodlands.

They're tough, and they're here to stay.

Does the wild bear poop in bed?

2011-05-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

We all know the wild bear poops in the woods, but does he poop in his bed?

I stumbled upon this old bear bed beside a large ponderosa pine in steep canyon country.

Ponderosa pines sometimes have a distinctive elevated berm of shed bark around the trunk, and disturbance of the zone is easy to see.

This tree had such a disturbance -- a clear round depression the size of small bear right next to the trunk.

Normally a bear bed looks like someone tried to dig a hole with a rototiller.

This bed wasn't fresh because it was covered with pine needles.

Fred wouldn't lie down in it, so I put my rucksack there for scale.

Cool enough. I was pleased with the find.

As I stepped away from it however, I exposed a well composted bear pie under the needles.

It seems the bear hung its hiney just over the rim of the bed, and therefore came close to committing the unforgivable -- pooping in bed.

Wetland engineer

2011-05-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

Location: Paradiso de los Mapaches

Beaver visited the set 7 times, and left 10 pictures over 3 week.

This was the only full body shot.

In another photo it was munching a stem of cat tail.

These are "bank beavers" -- they lodge in burrows dug into stream banks and levees.

My fellow camera trappers at Camtrapper.com post some very good beaver portraits with fair regularity.

For a monogamous rodent, however you'd expect to see more family shots.

Seems they sleep together but work independently.

Screech done gone and went

2011-04-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

Periodically Screech took her midnight constitutional under the eaves.

Gone are the little surprises on the patio.

The redhead won't miss them, but they always gave me a thrill.

Pellets and earthworms on the patio.

Yes, it finally happened.

The screech owl flew the coop. She moved out the night of April 18th.

We grew accustomed to her routine.

In the early evening Screech groomed in the privacy of her nest box; then she would pop up into the nest hole and doze for an hour or so.

She became wakeful a few minutes before takeoff and would then imitate a birdwatcher, jerking her head here and there as if the place was swarming with new life-listers.

As of last week her departure time was around 8:00PM, a little earlier if overcast.

One evening the redhead heard her mate trilling tenderly overhead in the live oak.

My only complaint was that the little bugger hadn't laid any eggs.

So I wrote to Hans Peeters. the owl expert, to ask what was up.

Hans responded:

" . . . normally Western Screech-owl eggs should make their appearance by early April, but we have to be generous and allow an extra week or so.

There's also the distinct possibility that your box is being used by a non-breeding individual of either sex as a roost site.

I had such a bird in our yard for several years.

This owl, however, eventually used another box nearby for raising young while retaining the first chamber for roosting.

So there are all sorts of possible scenarios. I'm envious, though, of your nest cam."

I'll pull the camera and lengthen the box for better viewing next year.

The other two boxes are a bit far further from the house, and though I'd love to monitor them too, it's a lot of work wiring them for video, and I've heard that remote transmission isn't reliable.

Wolverines in Oregon

2011-04-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Patrick Burns for the heads up on the recent camera trap photos of wolverines in Oregon.

More can be seen here.

The news and Patrick's advice to "Hang the meat high and see what you get" certainly fired me up.

Nope, didn't need the coffee this morning.

Seems those wolverines may be serious about coming back.

Lobita the red wolf

2011-04-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

"I have your interesting letter of October 20, with picture of your 6 months old red wolf; I am very appreciative of the picture as it is a beauty." Letter of Stanley P. Young to Bob Housholder, Oct. 24, 1958 (Smithsonian Archives).

Lobita looked a lot like a coyote, except that her muzzle was a bit thick.

It's quite likely that coyote blood ran through her veins, but her ancestors also included wolves, in particular the small enigmatic canids of the southeastern US known as red wolves.

Young wrote of the photo, "after viewing this young animal I was of the opinion that you have obtained a true red wolf - my opinion being based on coloration, size of the animal, and geographical grounds, bearing in mind the area in Oklahoma where you captured this animal."

Lobita was a 6-month-old pup when an Arizona hunter named Bob Housholder caught her in eastern Oklahoma, and took her home as a pet.

I wish I knew how Housholder caught the pup, but Young's correspondence is the only remaining information, so we'll never know.

Lobita looked quite at home in the picture, but Housholder had failed to make the animal into a suitable pet, and that's why he wrote to the Fish and Wiildlife Service.

He had already decided to get rid of the animal.

Young responded, "It has been my experience that the female of the wolf tribe is generally the hardest to tame, even when taken before the eyes are open; so what you are experiencing with your animal runs true to form as far as my experience goes.

In a subsequent letter (October 24, 1958) Young suggested that Housholder consider donating the animal to the National Zoo, where the only specimen in the collection was an aged female.

As a retired employee of the National Zoo I wrote to my contacts there to find if Lobita ever became part of the collection.

Apparently she didn't.

Hoping to contact one of Houshoulder's children, I wrote to the The Grand Slam Club/Ovis founded by Housholder in 1956.

No response.

Lobita remains a snapshot from a time when a few red wolves still roamed the thickets and woodlands of the southeastern US.

The otter paused

2011-04-24T19:01:00.000-07:00

You should recognize the setting -- el paradiso de los mapaches -- and as you can see there were more than raccoons that presented themselves for portraits.

An otter passed the camera on the 8th and 14th day leaving only single photos each time.

This was the only full body shot.

The camera was set for red-eye reduction.

In the Sony s600 the camera fires three short flashes before the shutter is opened for the final flash.

The pre-flashes seem to have gotten the animal's attention and put its eyes on "low beam".

I rather like the picture, but wish the it was about 3 feet closer.

I also wonder if the thief who stole my other camera enjoyed the otter pictures it had taken.

I'd be surprised if otters didn't pass that camera too.

Free coyote lure

2011-04-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

Fred makes a donation

Coyotes are attracted to dog scent and vice versa.

If you want to spice up your local coyote latrine for camera trapping a little anal scent from the pooch works nicely as a lure.

Your vet will evacuate your dog's glands using a paper towel, or you can just ask him to save a few samples for you from his patients.

Dog anal scent is a complex mixture of compounds of differing volatility, so don't leave the paper towel on the workbench or under the car seat.

Better to store it in a way that preserves the compounds.

Discard the unstained portion of the towel and save the smudged portion in ethyl alcohol.

You may also freeze it out of doors, for example in a zip lock bag in the garden shed.

For the sake of marital harmony I do not recommend storing it in the freezer.

Your wife will find it no matter how well you hide it, and even after you recover you may never be fit for camera trapping again.

A raccoon paradise

2011-04-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

There was nothing that stood out about set 443. It was just an opening in the marsh, a soggy mat of cattail roots that channeled water to a creek.

There are thousands of acres like it in the Sacramento Valley, and it is a veritable raccoon paradise.

There were little wet raccoons looking somewhat forlorn,

and a rather rotund raccoon that looked like an attraction at a road-side zoo.

They came alone and in groups.

Often they were snapped while gazing into space and grubbing in the water.

Only a few approached and inspected the camera.

The flash might have triggered a premature exit in one coon, but maybe it was just in a hurry or had an altercation.

Others attended to matters of personal hygiene.

High water didn't keep them away.

Soggy coons just shake it off.

The camera recorded 214 raccoon pictures in 21 days of operation, and by my reckoning there were about 80 visits -- a visit being a group of photos separated by short intervals of time.

The assumption is that such groups of photos are usually made by the same animal(s).

One usually finds high frequencies of visitation at food sources, and my conclusion is

that the marsh, and maybe this spot in particular -- seething with fish, amphibians, birds, and invertebrates is a smorgasbord for hungry coons.

An ill-begotten set

2011-04-17T21:18:00.000-07:00

The ill-begotten set 447

I drove the Chevy to the levee -- actually it was a Subaru, and no the levee wasn't dry.

Not by any means.

It was covered with a great flotilla of cackling waterfowl, and before us on the road was a black skid, as if someone had dragged a muddy corpse from the wooded swamp on one side to a marshy set from Hitchcock's "Birds" on the other.

This was the last of my four camera trap sets in the Sacramento Valley wetlands of last December, and it certainly looked the most promising, at least for aquatic mammals.

The mudslide that led to the wooded swamp had all the signs of a busy thoroughfare, and the road on the levee was littered with scat.

And it was promising photographically.

I hid the camera in a hummock of grass and made sure the sensor would activate at the maximum distance, where the animals emerged from the water.

The critters had to climb up the mud slide past the camera to reach the marsh.

If going in the opposite direction they had to slide down the muddy track.

Either way meant interesting pictures.

So the attraction of the site outweighed any reservations I had about the camera being discovered.

It was well hidden in the grass, and the thief would have to climb down the mud slide to see it.

Not likely, I reasoned, because the slide didn't go anywhere of interest to most people, unless you were a trapper or a poacher.

So I took a chance, and it was a mistake.

There was no sign of the it the other day when we collected the cameras.

The site was still above the high water mark; the camera didn't wash away in winter floods.

Someone had found it and taken it.

But all loses aren't equal.

I can adjust to the drowned cam U. At least I can see the pictures it took, and I can salvage a few parts for future home brews.

But a stolen camera is a very bothersome thing.

That smell of dead meat again

2011-04-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't recall "The smell of dead meat", here's another story on the theme.

It's about what can happen when (a) a cougar (the four-legged variety) crawls under your deck and dies, (b) your guests notice the smell over a glass of wine, and (c) you discover that you are anosmic.

Talk about good luck -- how many folks can brag about a cougar dying under the deck?

Camera U's final gift

2011-04-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

For the camera trapper who has forgotten that creeks flood and that dirt roads can turn into quagmires, or believes that engineered wetlands maintain a constant water level, or thinks he walks under a lucky star . . . well folks, this is what can happen.

Welcome to the Sacramento Valley in December -- December 2, to be exact.

That's when the story began, when yours truly and Random Truth staked Camera U at the edge of a riparian wetland.

I had great expectations. The place was crawling with wildlife.

And sure enough, otters and raccoons left 12 images the very first night.

That's right, river otters -- my first camera-trapped otters on the first night!

The place was hot.

During the next four days Cam U snapped another 19 images.

The raccoons kept coming, and there was the tail-end of an egret and black-tailed deer.

On December 6 the water started to rise, and the promise of set 444 faded rapidly.

In three minutes the water level rose another 4 inches, and at 45 minutes past noon Cam U went under.

Under water it shorted and snapped 50 blurry photos in 3 minutes.

And that was it.

Camera U was finito.

A couple days ago I removed the precious memory stick and cleaned the sludge from the contacts.

It still worked, and that's why there is more to this story than the two photos at the beginning and end.

At the moment Camera U is lying in state on my work bench.

When dry it will join other casualties in the camera trap catacombs, which is just a box in the closet.

Rainy day ringtail

2011-04-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

It was raining after the clock struck one on March 6th.

That's when the ringtail came grubbing around the base of the outcrop.

In three and half minutes the camera snapped it only three times.

This location is about three quarters of a mile from the previous ringtail set, but with a home range as large of 1500 acres this ringtail could be the same animal -- though I doubt it.

It's going to take some work to get a decent portrait of this critter, but I'd settle for a mediocre picture of mother ringtail and the kids.

Soon the kids will be in tow, hopping about, exploring, and playing.

The Yesin observed

2011-04-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Sketch of a yesin balanced on a tumbler

[Continued from "The elusive Yesin"]

"Is there such a thing as a 'Yesin' or not? "

That was how Colonel Hla Aung, Director of the Rangoon Zoo launched his dissertation on the cryptic mini-beast in the Sunday Working People's Daily of Rangoon on August 30, 1970.

A lot had happened since Hopwood sent the fake yesin to Bombay for indentification.

The Japanese invaded Burma weeks after Pearl Harbor, thousands fled through the Naga Hills to safety in India and thousands died along the way.

Claire Chennault, the Flying Tigers, General Slim, Vinegar Joe Stilwell -- they all came and went, and 4 years after the war ended Burma won independence.

Rumors of the yesin hadn't gone away, and Hla Aung did a service to crytozoologists by summarizing reports in obscure periodicals (though I should note that you won't find the Working People's Daily on the internet).

The yesin apparently was not an uncommon subject in the news at the time, but the reports and photos were usually about the talismanic dried remains in the possession of elephant oozies or mahouts.

Burmese dacoits and mahouts shared in their belief in the power of protective talismans.

Dacoits trusted that carved talismans in the image of spiritual nats conferred invincibility against bullets.

Like so many cloves of garlic the talismans were inserted into cuts in the skin and bolstered the bandits' confidence to undertake remarkable feats of daring.

Once captured by the colonial police however, the dacoits' truculence was easily undone when the talismans were extracted with razor blade.

Similarly, mahouts believed that a dried yesin or its tusk was a magical goad capable of making a bad elephant good or spurring a lazy timber elephant to obedience.

When U Ba Myaing published his yezin investigations Hla Aung summarized the results.

U Ba Myaing was a retired Veterinary Inspector of the colonial government stationed in Sandoway, now Rakhine State.

He started interviewing coastal fishermen in 1925, but ten years passed before he managed to lay hands on male and female specimens caught by fishermen.

The female yesin was captured in Ngamaukchaung, an estuarine creek on Padin Kyun (kyun = island)

He gave a meticulous description.

The skin was gray and smooth (no mention of hair), and the stomach, which was apparently single chambered and the size of a gooseberry, contained plant matter and algae.

There were 4 toes on the front and hind feet, the tusks were 1.5 inches long, and the reproductive organs were elephant-like. The male had a quarter inch long penis.

The inspector was well aware of the elephant's alleged fear of the yesin and the belief of elephant men that a dried yesin, mini-tusk, or even a scrap of skin could be used to control even the most recalcitrant man killer.

He reported his experiment of hiding a yesin tusk in a stream -- it struck such fear into several working elephants that their mahouts were unable to drive them into the water.

In another instance, the prxomity of the yesin caused a cow to abort its fetus.

Then there is the report of Thakin Khin Maung Oo (aka Bo Taya) of Thirty Comrades fame, who saw a pair of yesin disporting themselves in a rocky pool in the Pegu Range near the Shan Plateau.

He organized the mahouts to trap one using a bamboo fish trap, and kept the captive in a kerosene can filled with water.

When it died three days later he measured and dissected it.

It was 6 inches long, and the tusks in this animal grew from the upper jaw (unlike the faked yesin jaws made from rodent mandibles).

Col Hla Aung also wrote of his own experiment to test the alleged fear of yesin shown by zoo elephants.

The elephants showed no reaction to sniffing a box containing a dried yesin.

He concluded his article,

"Although only faked specimens of the 'Yesin' had come to light so far, there is every reason to believe from the evidence collected by field observers, that a real 'Yesin' belonging to a separate genus of mammal does exist, and when fresh specimens of a "Yesin' are obtained in the future, it will be possible to verify the true nature of the animal."

The question is this: is the yesin an undescribed species of water rat?

[N.B.: coming soon -- a modern yesin hunter].

References

Evans, G.H. 1910. Elephants and their diseases. A treatise on elephants. Rangoon, Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma.

Hla Aung, Col. 1970. The water elephant or Yesin. The Sunday Working People's Daily, August 30, 1970.

U Ba Myaing. 1970. 'Yesin'. Loketha Pyithu Nezin, August 13, 1970 (not seen, reference mentioned in Hla Aung's article.)