The camera bully revealed

This may be the rascal that dislodged the camera in the tree cavity last week. 

You may recall that finding the camera on the ground changed my game plan. 

Before getting creative again and stuffing the camera down the cavity, I had to see what creature had sent the camera tumbling.  

A bear was the first thing that came to mind, but maybe a ringtail chimney- stemmed the hollow trunk and jarred the camera loose. 

Even a spotted skunk could have knocked it down. 

These were the more exotic possibilities, but more realistically a rotund wood rat might have pushed it aside while trying to squeeze through the gap.

I learned last Saturday that gray fox and wood rat were the only ones to show. 

One photo captured gray boy doing the unexpected.

Look at this odd posture.

It resembles the scent-marking handstand done by a number of carnivores, including some civets, mongooses, and the stubby-legged bush dog of Latin America. 

Even the oddball dog has been known to defecate in a handstand, but I never knew gray foxes performed this charming maneuver. 

Following this little stunt gray boy examined the camera at close range and left 6 telling images.

After that the camera stopped taking pictures.

When I found the camera it was ajar and no longer aimed at the hollow tree.

I can only conclude that the fox was the camera bully. 

Struck out

Last week was a no-show. Three cams, no pictures.

The hollow canyon live oak was my biggest disappointment.

I was about to leap squirrel-like into its mossy arms when I noticed my camera lying there face down at my feet.

Apparently something dislodged it to reach a dab of castoreum, and it tumbled down through the hollow trunk. 

What to do?

Defer further attempts at a cavity set.

I set the camera away from the tree to see what manner of beast caused the disturbance.

Plan B will depend on the critter. 

A Room with a View

The snag -- a canyon live oak.

If hollow trees were sentient beings, they would cringe when they see me coming.

You see, the codger regularly administers an examination of hollow trees that resembles a colonoscopy.

Looking up from the bottom.

My point and shoot camera is the endoscope.

It's a harmless procedure for tree and examiner, though there's a remote risk that something inside might clamp down on your arm during the examination.

All you do is stick your handheld camera into the cavity, point it upward, press the shutter release, and check the resulting image on the LCD.

Most of the time the cavity is shallow and filled with rotten wood and spider webs.

The conjoined trunks of this oak however measured 12 feet around, and both were hollow and free of spider webs, indicating that furry mammals used it regularly.

Looking down from the top --  a distance of 11 feet.

One trunk had a capacious space that tapered upwards and extended into the limbs.

The cavity opened to the outside 11 feet up, where a limb had snapped off some years ago.



There was another "window" 5 feet above ground.

The cavity was a room with a view, but the most interesting view was from the outside looking in.

I could see inside from three openings, and decided the best view for the camera trap was looking down from the top.

A camera trap wedgie

I lodged the camera into the opening, and when I came back a week later found 353 photos of brush mice and dusky-footed wood rats.

Wood rat ascending the hollow trunk.

There were no surprises. It was a busy place, and I expected rodents, but I wanted to show them in a setting we don't normally see.

Brush mouse caught in the midst of a grooming session. This picture was taken at noon, long after bedtime.

The upper reaches of the cavity seemed to be a wood rat's feeding perch, but for the life of me I cannot identify the food.

Wood rat eating unidentified insect??? 

Mr Smiley of Bunyipco thinks it might be the instar or larval form of a cicada.

If so, the rat dug it up, because at this time of year all cicadas are immature and live in the soil.

Glimpsing natural history in a hollow log can raise unanswered questions, but that's good.

If images from a camera trap don't make you wonder you are missing one of the simple pleasures of the sport.

Deadwood Stick Real Estate.

Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that winter is the time to check out real estate.

The irrepressible Random Truth has been doing just that.

He's been regaling his fans with photos of properties on the SF peninsula and their stunning homeowners, and his candid reportage has gotten a lot of folks off their duffs.

They're out cruising the neighborhoods, scoping real estate.

I had already filed and almost forgotten this photo of an impressive mansion I recently encountered.

It was in an upscale community near Arcata.

Thought you would enjoy a glimpse of luxury.

Here's the listing from Deadwood Stick Realty.

"Spacious construction in a gated community on a quiet country road.
Intimate setting. Built to last. Arts and crafts home with pleasing rustic touches. Hardwood stick floors, walls, and ceilings. Great dining room with 3 attached larders. Master bedroom generously provisioned with bay laurel. Passive solar heating warms the home in winter, and 2 composting toilets keep the master bedroom toasty warm. 4 strategically placed exits guarantee safe emergency evacuations.Stunning views of the scenic Mad River. Frolic or fish in crystal clear pools just outside your back door.    

80% financing available to qualified buyers."

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.

A fisher stopped by the other day

Fisher on an ancient stump in the redwoods of Humbolt County

Long ago when the Earth was wintry and game was scarce,  fisher summoned his friends to break into Skyland. 
   
Only wolverine had the brawn to tear the sky open, and through the hole warmth and birds swept down on the frozen earth below. 


The intrusion so displeased the Sky People that they shot fisher with bow and arrow. 


But as fisher was dying they realized the great hunter from Earth, fisher, was a good guy looking out for his friends. 


So the Great Spirit took pity, nursed fisher's wounds, and hung him in the sky. 


The next time you gaze at the Big Dipper, remember that you are also looking at fisher.

* * * * *

I was blithely basking in January's seductive weather, occupying myself with dog-outings and garage projects, when my thoughts drifted to Humbolt's redwoods and a sobering vision assaulted my reverie.

I saw my stoic sentinels, the clear-eyed cameras of November past, listing on their posts, draped in soggy spider webs, and speckled with splash-dirt.

I saw a prostrate camera -- disemboweled and filled with water.

This worrisome vision ignited a burning flame under the codger's skinny butt.

The cams had been there for over two months, and soon the long-overdue storm would dump its Pacific payload and close Rt 299 through the Trinity Alps.

The cams could be stranded for another month or two, or an impatient codger could get marooned in Sasquatch country.

I emailed Lowell and Terry, got the green light for a visit, and a few days later did the 5-hour drive.

The next day we checked and serviced the cams which were indeed draped with spider webs, and at the end of the day we viewed the pixeled fisher -- ah, the sweet thrill of camera trap victory.

Upon checking the EXIF data, we found the road-killed squirrel had cured for a month before fisher scented the delicacy just before noon on a sunny December day.

It groomed a bit before digging in,

Revealing a spotted throat and a bit of a white tush. 

then ate at a leisurely pace.

It finished in 10 minutes, and the cam captured 31 photos.

There were enough images to see that this fisher has a white spot on the underside of its right wrist, which means we may be able to recognize it in the future.

I have now cam-trapped all but two of California's slinky mustelids -- northern otter, mink, short-tailed and long-tailed weasels, badger, American marten, and fisher.

Wolverine and sea otter remain.

I'm not after the sea otter, nor the state of California's only wolverine.

If I camtrapped the wolverine, however, I could boast a Grand Slam of the golden state's terrestrial mustelids.

Does anyone know the whereabouts of Buddy the bachelor wolverine this winter?

A hard-to-get tree vole

Arborimus pomo, the Sonoma tree vole

At last the hard-to-get Sonoma tree vole, the secret of the Douglas fir forest, the mainstay of Northern spotted owls was captured in pixels.

I hope you are sitting there in wonderment as you view the seldom-seen rodent at work in its nest 35 feet above ground.

And if you want to fill in the picture conjure the feel of the damp coastal air, the woodsy scent of conifers, and the murmur of the Mad River.

The cams had been in the field for 70 days, but the batteries in this one called it quits on November 20th, only 18 days after we made the set.

But 267 images is still a good haul, so we uploaded to my laptop on the tailgate of Terry's pickup, and as we flipped through the images we found that the vole's nest had a life of its own.

Indeed it expanded and deflated like a slumbering mini poodle, and several shots showed a centipede and a millipede grubbing about in the midden of resin ducts and twigs.

The tree vole on the other hand exposed itself in only 10 pictures, and of those only two were full body shots.

She revealed her tail and slender hips,

A full frame view of the nest of Douglas fir needles with the vole hauling a Douglas fir sprig.

but most of the time she was hauling and hidden behind twigs of Douglas fir.

A cropped view of the vole from the photo above. 

Back home I retrieved my Arborimus file and found that our modest success was a far cry from that of Eric Forsman and his colleagues at Oregon State University who studied the related red tree vole (Arborimus longicaudus).

Using a commercial video camera system they captured and analyzed over 300 days of videos totaling 6700 hours, and refuted the belief that tree voles are "slow, docile and somewhat clumsy climbers".

That dubious reputation was based on observations of sleepy and confused tree voles that had been rousted from their nests during the day.

On the contrary, they found that foraging voles "were often so rapid it was hard to follow them as they scurried in and out of the nest."

That speed explained why over 95% of our pictures were blank; the rodent activated the camera trap's sensor but was usually gone when the shutter released.

As for the changing size of the nest, successive photos show resin ducts accumulating at the top of the nest and then sliding down.

It seems the vole's favorite feeding perch might have been just above the camera's view.

One of these days we'll take on the tree vole with a video camera, but I make no promises as to when.

I have two DXG 125s on the work bench, but hacking an HD video camera is far more intimidating than a point and shoot camera.



Reference

Forsman, E.D., J.K. Swingle, and N.R. Hatch. 2009. Behavior of red tree voles (Arborimus longicaudus) based on continuous video monitoring of nests. Northwest Science, 83(3):262-272.