Ring around the collar

You can't fully appreciate it from the photo, but Stinkarella has a ring around the collar.

I pulled a couple of cameras today, and this spotted skunk made a couple of appearances on an overgrown logging road.

In all of the photos its nose is in the ground and its neck is stained.

I've seen the dirty neck before in these little Butte County stinkers.

Rubbing the neck on smelly substances, or self-anointing is a common trait among carnivores and a familiar and distressing habit of dogs.

That's how stinky got the ring around the collar, I believe.

There are more theories than data about the function of self-anointing.

One prevalent idea is that it disguises the owner's scent.

Somehow I find this hard to believe in skunks.

Stinkarella and skunklets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patch Update # 4

The lower deer trail is getting regular wildlife traffic now, which is quite a change from last summer and fall when it seemed to be a dead zone.

Thirty photos were taken since my last update on the winter solstice. Three of these were blanks, i.e., the camera fired after the animal moved out of the frame. That's an acceptable success rate of 90%.

Squirrels, a deer mouse and a flock of turkeys walked past the camera. The photos weren't worth showing.

The gray fox spent 3 minutes sniffing about the trail (8 pictures), and the last picture of the series is the alert stance at the top of this page.



Three hours later and just before dawn this fox or its lookalike cocked its leg and pissed on the base of the tree. This was 12 days after the dog marked the same spot, but I suspect it was in response to some outrageously stinky Billingsley's Flat Rock Predator Bait I had dabbed at the base of the tree and a light garnish of dry catnip.



Two days later at 6:26 in the morning the fox indulged in a brief frenzy of neck rubbing on the same spot.



A spotted skunk also visited the site on three different nights and sniffed at the predator lure. Though the neck fur of these little charmers sometimes has a yellowish tint, I have never caught them in the act of "getting it on".



What I want to know is what happened to the bobcat? Now there's a species that plays hard to get.

Spotted skunklets

Huzzaaaahhh!

The skunklets have arrived with their mothers.

Sorry I can't offer a better family portrait, but these little skunks don't stay put. Mom is on the rock, and one of the three skunklets is out of sight.



Out of 60 images, only a couple of shots show them horsing around.



So they are not the best subjects for camera traps. Still, it's newsworthy from the standpoint of natural history.

The cams started to get baby images on June 25th, and I am sure I have 2 families -- one has four skunklets, and the other has three.

They are about three quarters adult size now. As far as I know, Wilfred Crabb's study of spotted skunks, published 63 years ago, is still the main reference on body growth. When I compared these youngsters to his photos of developing skunks, I concluded they are about 2 and a half months old. That would put their birth in mid to late April.

When Crabb studied his spotted skunks in Iowa, it was believed that there was one species. Then Rodney Mead discovered that western and eastern populations of spotted skunks differed greatly in gestation period or length of pregnancy. He discovered that the very prolonged gestation of western spotted skunks -- about 7 to 8 months-- was due to delayed implantation.

In most mammals the early embryonic stage known as the blastocyst implants itself in the wall of the uterus and continues development. In delayed implantation the embryo floats about in the uterus in suspended animation so to speak. It simply stops developing until it implants at a later date.

Mead found that the eastern populations have a relatively short pregnancy of 50-65 days, and delayed implantation lasts only two-weeks. These findings prompted a re-examination of the spotted skunk's taxonomy, and the former species, Spilogale putorius, was divided into the western species, gracilis, and the eastern species, putorius.

The photos of mother and young tell me that these skunks are probably at the very end of that contentious period of mammalian development called weaning conflict. That is when the youngsters are shifting from a diet of mother's milk to solids. Mother increasingly rejects their attempts to suckle, and the offspring become brazen and insistent. Mom gets stingier with her milk, and in the end the youngsters are forced to eat solid "grown-up food". It's one of those painful experiences of growing up.

The redhead and I witnessed this phenomenon in our daughter and grandchildren. We were amazed at the relentless will of the child who wants breast milk, especially after polishing off a peanut butter sandwich. Forget about clever excuses, rational explanations, and attempts at distraction. They don't work.

The child knows one thing which it sums up in a boisterous demand. "ME ME MILK!"

The name of the game is obvious, to convince the parent that failure to suckle will have dire consequences. And it does. Their crankiness drives you crazy.

Thus we coined the term "crankinpuss" -- the child with the sour expression because it didn't get its way.

"Are you a crankinpuss today?" (softly and sweetly said)

"I'M NOT A CRANKINPUSS. I WANT ME ME MILK." (in a very loud voice)

As I said, I think the skunklets have passed the crankinpuss stage. They seem to be having a lot of fun exploring the world.




Reference

Crabb, W.D. 1944. Growth, development, and seasonal weights of spotted skunks. Journal of Mammalogy 25(3):213-221.

Mead, R.A. 1967. Age determination in the spotted skunk. Journal of Mammalogy, 48:606-616.

Mead, R.A. 1968. Reproduction in eastern forms of the spotted skunk (genus Spilogale). Journal of Zoology, 156:119-136.

Mead, R.A. 1968. Reproduction in western forms of the spotted skunk (genus Spilogale). Journal of Mammalogy, 49:373-390.

van Gelder, R.G. 1959. A taxonomic revision of the spotted skunks (genus Spilogale). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 117:229-392.

Verts, B.J., L.N. Carraway, and A. Kinlaw. 2001. Spilogale gracilis. Mammalian Species, No. 674: 1-10.

Kinlaw, A. 1995. Spilogale putorius. Mammalian Species, No. 511: 1-7.

The thrill is gone

I was thrilled with my first pictures of a spotted skunk over a year ago. The chicken neck I had nailed to a mossy stump was intended for a grey fox, but the taker was the skunk. Its gladiatorial tango with the bait filled the camera's memory card. Six months passed before another spotted skunk encountered the cameras. I was ready for it, and baited it in with the patience of Sherlock. When I had exhausted the staging possibilities I had over two hundred pictures of one jazzed-up skunk climbing trees, disembowelling gopher carcasses, and digging holes to cache the meat.

Now I can't seem to escape the critters. The first time I saw this canyon live oak a diaphanous bobcat appeared momentarily in the crotch like a mirage. A week ago, when I finally laid my hands on squirrel a la camino I prepared the site with loving care. (Can't see the bait, can you?) Then I waited a week. Bobcat was no where to be seen, but Stinkarella was ready for action.

When she was done, her entourage of rodents was there to clean up the scraps.

Do skunk's scatter-hoard surplus food?

You know how the jackals and hyenas show up after the lion finishes its meal? Well, it looks like wood rats and deer mice here clean-up after mini-carnivores like Stinkarella, the spotted skunk.

This week the climbing skunk tackled and ate two gopher baits (Pics 1 and 2). The 2nd gopher (a big one) was gone in 45 minutes. The skunk then spent about 30 minutes coming and going, digging holes (pic 3), and checking out the cam (pic 4).

I didn’t give the digging much thought until I looked at the next 8 photos, which were triggered by 2 wood rats and a mouse (pics 5). The mouse was there first—an hour after the skunk’s exit. The rat made its appearance 3 hours later. It looks like the wood rat was digging where the skunk had dug. Stinkarella returned to the scene 25 minutes after the last wood rat photo (at 5:15AM), and stuck his head in the hole.

Hypothesis: the skunk "scatter hoards" its leftovers, just as a squirrel buries nuts. (Next time I’ll dig around to see what I find). Other animals "larder-hoard"--store a lot of food in one place. I haven't found any reference in the scientific literature about spotted skunks hoarding food. I admit the evidence is circumstantial, but maybe we're onto something.

A winsome skunk

I hadn't encountered Stinkarella, the spotted skunk since last February, but a few nights back she made an appearance to dig up 4 pieces of salmon skin. I buried the skin in an old woodpile of bull-dozed manzanita. It was created by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) about 30-years ago. It's also a whistle stop for local small mammals. The smell of that salmon kept drawing her back that first night--she made 6 visits over an 8-hour period.

The pictures here were made the next night (9:11 PM, October 14), when I used two dead deer mice as bait. It took her 14 minutes to scarf the mice, during which time the camera took 21 pictures. A half hour later she was back to see if any more mice had appeared, and I got two more pics. It seems that's when she first noticed the camera. Five hours later the woodrat showed up to check out the scene. The pics were all taken at a considerable distance, so you are seeing the cropped images.