Squirrel trials update #5

Last Monday we left for the bay area, but before leaving I stocked the owl box with sunflower seeds and made sure the camera trap was working.

Today I checked the camera to catch up.

After I put smooth plywood under the overhang the squirrels visited the box every day. They were stymied by these latest changes. They climbed about on the tree trunk and peered over the edge of the roof.

The deterrents didn't last long. On Tuesday, the first squirrel broke the sheet metal barrier. I regret not having a marked population of squirrels, and not recording the entry in movie mode. But somehow it reached the hole, and pulled itself in, as you can see for yourself.



The next day the same or another squirrel explored the box for 4 minutes and then made a left-handed side entry. Notice that the little bugger is gripping the upper edge of the roof with one hindfoot. The squirrel with the scratched nose did the same thing.



I am going to watch them for a few days to figure out their secret. Then it's back to the drawing board. Spring travel may force me to postpone further experiments until fall. The redhead just isn't very enthusiastic about watching squirrels and tending camera traps in my absense.

A curious cat

The four cameras we left in the Santa Cruz mountains a month ago took 244 pictures.

I expected at least a few coyote pictures, as there was plenty of scat to be found. We camouflaged only one of the cameras, so maybe wily coyote was camera shy. The rest of the cast was the usual assemblage of skunks, deer mice, woodrats, brush rabbits, and raccoons, as well as a varied thrush and a hermit thrush.

The camera hog was a young bobcat. Twenty+ pictures of it were on 3 of the 4 cameras. Most of the photos were taken at a small creek, really just a rivulet, where it seemed to be waiting to ambush thirsty birds in the morning. That was Reno's camera, and he was as happy about the photos as he was about finding some prime chantarelle mushrooms, which he generously shared with us. Good man!

I say 'young bobcat' because you can see that it still has to catch up with the growth of its ears, and obviously hasn't reached its fighting weight.



It made several skulking passes by my camera which was hidden under some coyote bush on a grassy hillside. I suspect it was the castoreum that attracted it.



The tear in its left ear told us it was the same curious cat. It had no qualms about facing the camera.

Squirrel trials update # 4

Since the last update I extended the roof to 6 inches. I thought the wonder-rodent couldn't do the yogic stretch to reach the hole. When squirrel encountered the modification it looked over the edge, and didn't even try. It snaked around the corner from the side of the roof where the overhang is only 2.5".

Fair enough. I decided to add 5" vertical barriers to the sides.



This seemed to make it even easier. Now the squirrel could oppose the grip of its hindlegs at 90 degrees, and in one swell foop it did the yogic stretch to reach the hole.



Exiting the box is also a cinch. Though the redwood is smooth, the joints on the corners and sides offer the squirrel more than adequate purchase.

It was time to raise the bar, as they say, which in this case meant enlisting Richard's help again. We covered the box with galvanized metal flashing.



You are looking up at the one area that isn't flashed -- the underside of the overhanging roof.

By 11:00 the next morning the remote alarm inside the box had not sounded, and I was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I had circumvented wonder-rodent.

"Guess, who hasn't gotten into the box today?" I asked the redhead rather smugly. (Her response, "Who?" was a polite admission that she wasn't really listening, a common pattern in the conversation of old couples and Seinfeld characters.)

Ten minutes later the alarm blasted in its irritating way.

A couple hours later I was gazing out the window and finishing a cup of coffee in quiet postprandial reflection, when the squirrel made a second appearance.

It climbed all around the box on the bark of the tree, mounted the roof, and looked over the edge at the hole. Then it rapidly scratched the metal roof as if trying to dig through. After a thoughtful pause, it went back to edge, leaned over the side, and crawled upside down on the exposed woodwork and entered the hole. It was just like a gecko.

This charged me with determination to do it one better. When the squirrel finished its repast 20 minutes later, I removed the roof and took it to the garage. Fifteen minutes later the undersurface of the roof was one smooth piece of plywood.



Stay tuned.

When a snag is not a home

I eyed this black oak with growing interest for two years. Those two knot holes, about 30 feet up, looked like they were made for owls.

Three weeks ago I got around to staking it out with a camera trap. I lashed the telescoping pole to a fir sapling, and raised the camera to the cavities.



Looks can be deceiving. I didn't even get a picture of a squirrel.

It looks as though the upper hole collects water which trickels into the lower cavity where it overflows. Somehow I failed to notice this.

No self respecting squirrel or owl would have anything to do with such a shabby place. Which reminds me, I have to repair the roof this summer.

Camera trapping grad student strikes gold

This is tremendous!

A graduate student studying carnivore ecology with the use of camera traps has photographed a wolverine in the Sierra Nevada. Read about it here.

This is about 40 miles south of where we'll be camera trapping this summer during the camera trapping workshop. (Who knows where I can get some wolverine scent?)

What a tremendous find!

Thanks to Nigel Rothfels (Wisconsin), Jim Steele (San Francisco), and Richard Lair (Thailand) for cluing the codger in.

Another mountain lion, again

This mountain lion wasn't cooperative. The fox and bobcat at least climbed up on the rock, and other mountain lions I have photographed have done the same on other rocks. But not this time.

I had 3 cameras out this last week, and two out of three had mountain lion pictures. This cat spent nearly 4 minutes at the site, but I got only 5 pictures. The camera was cabled to a crooked bay sapling and pointed up a bit too much -- not ideally aimed for a cat standing in front of the rock. (I corrected that today).



I used artificial civetone as a scent lure, and I imagine that's what the cat is licking. It came at 5:17 PM the day after I visited the set and put out the lure.



A close examination of the ears shows a notch in the right ear. That tells me that this cat is not Big Mama reported here a few weeks ago.

The other camera photographed the distant cat moving away from the camera. Three out of four lion photos on this trail show the tail-end of the cat. It seems the cat goes up the canyon by this route but returns by a different one.

As a aside, I have found two nests of band-tailed pigeons in this ravine. They are about 50' up in a black oak and a Douglas fir.

Squirrel trials update #3

This is a progress report. We haven't yet solved the squirrel-in-the-owl-box-problem. But I believe we are getting closer.

The squirrels aren't early birds. Usually I hear the alarm between 9:00 and 10:00 AM and dash to the window to see what's going on. By then the squirrel is in the owl box. The regulars seem to be young of last year, perhaps siblings.

Since my last report they visited and fed in the open-topped box for a week. Then I put the roof back on, and they had to get past the overhang of 2.5".

As expected, there was no contest. They just hang over the front and enter.

After a week of regular morning visits I extended the length of the overhand from 2.5" to 6.75". Again, they didn't miss a beat. Their rotational ankles make it easy to cling to the front edge of the box and reach the entrance.

This afternoon I extended the roof to 9". The squirrels will have to span 11" to reach the hole from the front edge of the roof.

I expect they'll start coming in from the side, where the straight line distance to the hole is 6.75".

I just hope they don't lose their appetite for sunflower seeds, so we can finish the trials in the next two weeks.

Oh yes, something else is going on, too. Yesterday's squirrel had a bloody patch of skin on one side of its face, and this morning another squirrel showed up with a bloody snout. Has mom become a pre-partum crankinpuss, and is she kicking butt when last year's litter shows up in the nest? I wonder.