About Me

My photo
Native Californian, biologist, wildlife conservation consultant, retired Smithsonian scientist, father of two daughters, grandfather of 4 small primates. INTJ. Believes nature is infinitely more interesting than shopping malls. Born 100 years too late.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Camera shy coyotes


[Jan. 27, 2009; 9:31 PM)

This was the best we did in the coyote department on set 206 in Marin County. (And the picture is cropped.) 

The camera was not hidden or camouflaged. We gathered old turds and made an artificial yote latrine not far from the camera.

And we doctored those turds with a commercial coyote scent.

I think the yodel dogs move back and forth on the trail regularly, but most of the pictures looked like this. 


[Jan 27, 2009; 8:50 AM]

Yes, that's a coyote down the trail. Here's another one cropped a bit.

[ Feb 4, 2009; 9:08 AM]

It was a productive set with an 80 - 85% success rate (# animal frames/total # frames), and 3 to 6.6 pictures per day, which isn't bad for a trail. 

Deer traffic was high (305 photos)-- this old fire cut led to a deer trail in the adjacent woods.

We got 18 bobcat photos, 8 pictures of people, and 6 of coyotes. 

Plus, a couple of scrub jays, a brush rabbit, and a raccoon. 

I'm sure a mountain lion would have eventually shown up, but I wanted to try again in another place, mainly for those elusive coyotes.

So I pulled the cam and made a new set in the coastal scrub, but this one is camouflaged.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chris I love your blog. I just saw some equally hilarious photos from camera trap in Mbirikani on lionguardians blog http://lionguardians.wildlifedirect.org - hoping for lions coming to Masai homes so that they could identify the culprits that kill the cattle, camera's caught zebra, giraffe, striped hyena, antelopes, lots of bunnies, and a few Masai...and an African wild cat

Bornean Rose said...

Hi Chris...

You have a very nice and beautiful collections of cam trap photos..i envy it...

Camera Trap Codger said...

Thanks a lot, ladies, and those leopard shots are beautiful, Paula.

cliff said...

Codger, I can see where your up to the challenge, the quest for the perfect yote photo.

Good luck, cliff

Camera Trap Codger said...

Yep, the camera trapper's ultimate challenge is a decent close-up of yodel dog, and not using bait.

ALP813 said...

Nice shots!! :)

Anonymous said...

Sorry for my post .Where i can watch more info about?

Anonymous said...

Hey,Congratulations to the site owner for this marvelous work you’ve done. My name is Burton .I like you blog!
Thanks, Bye Bye.