About Me

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

Monday, July 19, 2010

One digging dude




He came in the darkness of night -- 11:20 to be exact.



Quickly cased the scene, including the camera,


and then went to work.


Finally he came up for air.



Apparently the job was done -- completed in 9 minutes.

He cleaned up and hit the trail.

Whether he carried off the festering can of cat food we do not know.

It was gone, just like the batteries that powered the camera that took these pictures.

  

6 comments:

suek said...

May I go off topic a moment? I keep some horses on a property that borders a mostly dry riverbed located in Coastal So. Cal. We don't see many snakes, but this weekend, my husband saw a brown snake, about 2 ft long (his guess) that zipped across the dirt roadway. He said "no triangular head, no stripes either around or along". I'm looking at possible ids - it's good to know "who's" about the area. Have you any suggestions as to places to get info?

dr_fiehlgood said...

It sounds like your husband might have seen a western yellow-bellied racer. Here is a link to some background information on that snake:

http://www.californiaherps.com/snakes/pages/c.c.mormon.html

That website has all of the snake species in California. If it's not a racer, you will probably find what it was on that site. Hope that helps.

suek said...

Thank you...I'll check it out and see if he recognizes anything. And book mark the site. It's good to know your neighbors!

Anonymous said...

Wow! Great photos of a Badger. It must be like winning the lottery?
Congratulations Codger.
T.S.

John W. Wall said...

Looks like a spider came to see what the ruckus was about in the final frame.

Camera Trap Codger said...

Indeed, it's peeping over the log at the grunting earth moving machine.