Bobcat food

This is the area where the bobcat passed a few days ago.

Turkeys are an alien (=introduced) species in California, but bobcats and other predators have accepted them without prejudice.

The cam took 0.9 pictures/day here in 12 days, but the majority of the traffic was from this flock of hen turkeys and a couple of squirrels.



When I scoped these pictures out on the trail it was a ho-hum moment.

A couple years ago I would have moved the camera to a new location.

But sooner or later something less common will make an appearance.

So I'll just wait it out a bit longer.

I am not growing more patient. It's just that I have enough cameras now to work several locations at a time.

Could this be the scat inspector?

Just back from 3 days in California's inner coast range with three of my codgerly friends. We had a ball, and you'll hear more about it soon, but for now I have only a question.

What does a turkey do when it encounters a pile of carnivore scat?

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke, and no, it doesn't gobble it down. But the picture above tells me turkeys may pause to inspect little piles of poop.

Have a look below. This is what was on the trail -- a collection of carnivore turds -- and you can see them under the hen's breast (above).



Okay, the picture doesn't show the bird actually examining the scat. The exposure was probably a little late for that. But in view of the camera's 3-5 second lag time, I suspect it was the scat that caused the bird to pause.

One of my fellow codgers suggested a reason why turkeys might examine animal scat. Maybe they recycle the seeds in it. Or maybe they attract insects that the turkey gleans with her beak.

Trail poop is always food for thought, at least for old biologists.

Patch Update # 2

Checked the patch today, and found that a puma made an appearance at 9:54 in the morning 2 days after Thanksgiving. That was 4 days after I changed the batteries and memory stick. This was the only picture.

I didn't refresh the scent patch, and evidently it didn't hold much interest. What a difference from back in July, April, and May. If she had paused to sniff it I should gotten one full body shot.

She looks a little thin, and maybe that explains why she's on the prowl at this time of day. So, camera trapping season on pumas has officially opened.

Oh, yes, a few turkeys walked by too.

Gobblefest straggler

Last week Wolfgang Schleidt asked if I could help him get an hour long tape recording of springtime turkey gobbling. In the early morning. My ethology teacher, who now refers to himself as "old grey wolf" wrote:

"I did a lot of turkey vocalization recording and measurements for many years, but ONE specific situation I had neglected was to record “early morning gobbling” while the toms are still on the roost, and presumably interacting with toms on distant roosts miles away under optimal conditions for sound propagation. I observed this only once, in the spring of 1967 at the Welder Wildlife Refuge at Sinton, Texas, when I was sneaking up on a roost tree under cover of darkness, and listening to the strutting up above which continues throughout the night. Gobbling started before the break of dawn, intensified with the first rays of the sun, and ended when the birds left the roost. Then they went for a drink, and started the daily routine with a big bout of preening, still within meters of the roosting area."

Unfortunately, I didn't have these conditions, and the professor let me off the hook. "Thank you once again, but there is no need to get into the act, except if your area is suddenly inundated by turkeys!" A friend in Oregon had exactly what he was looking for.

As luck would have it, the next morning we were inundated with turkeys. As the gobblefest moved up the slope toward the house I tore into my storage boxes searching for recording equipment.

"They're out by the garage", called the redhead. I hurried to the kitchen and looked out the window. An old gobblehead was escorting a flock of ten nubile hens. He stood there with that fluffed-up air of self-adoration as the hens pecked here and there in distraction. Then they crossed the driveway and headed down the ravine on the other side of the house. I returned to testing the recorders.

"Here come more turkeys", called the redhead again. Now the short-bearded wannabe-Toms had arrived. Like adolescent boys in the locker room their's seemed a slightly confused world. They alternately strutted at one another and gawked at the kingpin with the girls down the hill. When the kingpin gobbled so did they. In essence they were shameless peeping Toms.

By mid-afternoon I admitted defeat. The only working recorder and microphone in my possession didn't have compatible connectors, and the gobblefest was far in the distance.

Two days later I found this single photo of a hen turkey in the camera trap down the hill. She might have been a member of the flock, but now she was alone. As the late and great Ann Richards would say, the hen had been "basted". And now it was time to nest.