The Goose Pen

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.

Curious, hungry, or angry?

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.

Awesome athletes

The air-born phase of the broad jump.

Taut-muscled athletes -- yes, we have them at the Chimineas Ranch.

Sometimes we see them in training late at night.

It's all track and field events -- no team sports.

It was our good fortune to capture a few images of one of these athletes practicing the broad jump.

Scope out this athlete's form -- the extended whiskers, erect ears, flexed forepaws and symmetrically poised hind feet.

The straight back and gracefully arched tail show the ballistic perfection of the bullet--shaped body.

This Olympian demonstrates gold metal form.

The launching or propulsive phase of the broad jump (feet still on the ground).

Last camera trap, last hope for ringtail

The recess -- a predators lair with cattle bones.

Three of the four camera traps we had set at Chimineas had no sign of ringtail.

I've talked about two of the sets already, and I won't bore you with the deermice and woodrats that visited the third set -- a low hillside of weathered boulders.

Of more interest was the secret petroglyph, but like the ringtail, it couldn't be found. 

Our fading hope was the final location -- a v-shaped outcrop with a horizontal recess.  

It was near a dry wash at the convergence of several routes including a dirt road and something had dragged cattle and deer bones into the recess. 

Topographically it was one of those places that makes you want to climb around and explore. 

Two months ago we decided the recess was the place to set the camera. 

The problem had been anchoring the mounting post between the floor and ceiling.

I had jammed it here and there with a vague sense of self-loathing for failing to make an expandable post required by this situation. 

After wedging some rocks under the post I was satisfied it would hold as long as nothing bumped into it.

So here we were two months later.

We looked into the recess and . . .  "Noooo, tell me its not true" --  the camera was lying face down on the bedrock. 

That might not be a bad thing.

We opened the cam and looked at the pictures -- there were 138 of them taken over five days.

Not bad.

As you might have guessed ringtail was missing, but . . . .

.

.

there were several pictures of a ringtail imitator.

A wood rat had chimney-stemmed the crevice at the back of the recess. 

A male bobcat had also visited to explore the scents we had planted. 

He didn't show his face, but he made a departing gesture 11 seconds after this photo.

 

He sprayed urine on the left side of the wall. 

 

A fence lizard passed through, and one morning Lincoln's sparrow scratched about. 

Correct my id if I am wrong.   

One evening a kangaroo rat (probably Dipodomys heermanni) showed up. 

A nice surprise.

A wood rat in the background and a kangaroo rat up front. 

We weren't ready to quit this place, so we piled rocks around another camera (the one at the top of the page). 

Craig checked it last week.

There was plenty of animal sign, and maybe ringtail had been there. 

But I had set it for 24 hr pictures, a mistake.

Hot air movement triggered the camera continuously.

The card was filled with pictures of hot rocks.