In a patch of horsetail

 I have been stumbling into patches of horsetail for several years now.

You know the stuff . . . scour brush . . . puzzlegrass . . . Equisetum.

It's a bizarre and ancient family of plants, a living fossil.

I think I read somewhere that native Americans used the gritty stems as toothbrushes. If true, they had calloused gums and no tooth enamel.

Horsetail grows in moist soil, in small patches or large monocultures -- Jurassic gardens, so to speak, and an authentic venue for war games with dino toys.

I've wondered what if anything lurks in horsetail, until last September when I finally got around to setting a camera trap in a stand near the Mad River.

It was on a silted flood bench, measured about 60 by 30 feet, and was surrounded by riparian woodland -- sword fern, alder, willow, Ceanothus, and bay laurel.

It was a troublesome set.

The camera happened to be one of my early constructions with a rocker switch on the bottom, not a recommended design for a macro-set with the camera sitting on the ground.

Two months later (early November) I found that I had inadvertently switched off the power when I set the camera.

I set it again and waited another 75 days.

The battery pooped out after 53 days, but I was gruntled to find there were 260 exposures.







The usual suspects, woodrats and deer mice had evidently triggered many of the 110 blank exposures,

but we also got opossums, raccoons, bobcats, and a spotted skunk.








And a song sparrow.













Many of the larger mammals were captured as partial images, because this was a macro-set, and my real goal was -- you guessed it -- shrews and white-footed voles.

So I was pleased to get the shrew at the top of the page.

As for its identity, we can dismiss two possibilities.

The marsh shrew has a dark belly, nearly as dark as its back, and the fog shrew has a unicolored tail.

That leaves us with the Wandering shrew and the Trowbridge shrew, both of which have bicolored tails and winter coats of gray.

The site was suitable habitat for both species.

If we can find an even bigger patch of horsetail, I'm game for another set.

Bottled shrews for the taking

Anne-Marie of Pondering Pikaia has posted a fine piece on the shrew's dilemma -- death in a beer bottle. It would be hard to design a simpler and more perfect death trap for small mammals, and shrews seem to be more vulnerable than mice.

Maybe it's the resonating effect of the bottle when a trapped beetle is scratching inside. Maybe it's the tantalizing bouquet of beer-stewed invertebrates. . . . whatever it is, it works.

Of course, its not just beer bottles that attract shrews, coke bottles work too. But like shrews, mammalogists are strongly attracted to beer bottles -- as long as there is beer or shrews inside.

Pondering Pikaia -- check it out.