In the family way

We're hoping this badger is in the family way, and we can't even prove it's a she-badger.

But she looks feminine, and she is doing all the right things. 



She's spending an awful lot of time in this one burrow at the Chimineas Ranch, and the burrow has a huge tailing of fresh dirt.

And it's baby-badger-time-of-year. They give birth in March and April.

With the help of our trusty friend Craig, and his assistants, RandomTruth and I spent a few days at the ranch last month setting cams at carnivore dens.

At this promising den I set a Sony s600 for stills, and a Bushnell Trophy for videos of playful badger babies.

Regrettably, the Trophy can't be set for night time only, so there's been a flurry of false triggers in the heat of the day.

Craig, our good man in Chimineas has been cleaning the lenses and checking the memory cards.

Here's his most recent message.

"It seems that the badger shots decreased quite a lot over the course of the month.  I'm hoping it's because she had youngsters. 

As the badger usage decreased, Heermann's kangaroo rat visitation increased.  There are many shots of them bouncing around the entrance to the den. 

When I reset the camera, I saw that there was a rodent hole just above the badger den.  It seems unwise for a fossorial small mammal to have a den next to a badger den, but kangaroo rats were never known for their smarts.  

Raccoons visited the den and sniffed around a few times over the course of the set.  I still think that the badger is using this den."  

Knock on wood, my friends.

Let us hope the blessed event has transpired and that mom is blissfully nursing her litter.

Black bear

This image of a young black bear is from the Chimineas Ranch, taken at set 551.2 last November.

Craig checked the camera in mid-March. The cams are often inaccessible in the winter, so its a long haul. But we've gotten over 4 months of battery life using 2 external D cells.

Twelve days after the camera was set the bear climbed the outcrop to reach the bait and eyed the camera.

Craig still has a few cameras to check in the back country at Chimineas, and  soon I'll also be checking the cameras in Humbolt County, as well.

A windfall of cherries

Hollyleaf cherry (Prunus ilicifolia)

A year and a half ago we were bumping along in the pickup when a bulb above Random Truth's head suddenly filled the cab with bright light.

"How about setting a cam in that patch of hollyleaf cherries on Gillam Spring Road?".

According to the scatological calendar it was that time of year again: the landscape was littered with carnivore scat, as it always is, but now most of the scat was chock full o' nuts, which means the critters were pigging out on wild cherries.

You can't mistake the pit of the hollyleaf cherry for anything else. As cherry pits go, they are BEEEG.

"Good idea, RT".

I am fond of windfall sets, but Craig was non-commital.

"You never know who's gonna show up at the cherry patch", I continued, "and ringtail might make a surprise appearance.

If indeed Craig was lukewarm to the idea, the mention of the elusive Chimineas ringtail changed his mind. He headed for Gillam Spring Road.

Well, we were too late in 2010. The cherries were past fruiting.

But we didn't forget.

A bumper crop of hollyleaf cherries called us back in 2011, and we set a camera at the assigned thicket.

We fetched it a month later and found over 400 photos.

The most common visitor (151 photos) was our old friend the wood rat. 

The wood rat (probably Neotoma macrotis) hauling a stick , which it dropped a few moments later.

In two shots the rodents were carrying cherries, in three shots they were hauling sticks, and the rest of the time they were running around or exploring. 

Gray foxes appeared on 4 occasions, and there was one photo of a bear's backside, clearly detectable only after photoshopping.

There were no surprises at set 530; in fact it was a bit of a disappointment.  

I knew the wood rats would be there; they're everywhere.

But I thought they would tell us a different story, a story about fulfilling their manifest destiny as seed dispersers.  

Not this time.

If we try again, with cameras at several patches of hollyleaf cherry, wood rat might give us a surprise.

But there are a lot of other subjects worthy of camera trapping, and wood rat can always be relied on for a cameo appearance.   

A meal that kept giving

There was no gaseous bloat, no writhing skin bag of maggots.

Just a cold carcass, which in the words of cowboy curmudgeon Wallace McRae, had barely started its 'transformation ride'*.

"Now, if we had 'really beeg cojones' ", I mused, "we'd gut this elk and put a cam in the body cavity".

The gaggingly repugnant but most sporting of camera trap sets -- the 'chest-cavity set' periodically tempts me as a route to up-close and personal pics of hide-tearing flesh-gulping predators.

Cavity sets,  if you are willing to crawl into dark places, are usually reserved for hollow logs, burrows and caves.

Wildlife photographer Alan Root knows no limits in such matters (at least in his youth), and to him we owe gratitude for showing the marvelous possibilities in Mysterious Castles of Clay.

Even if you don a garbage bag, setting a camera in the chest cavity of a large dead ungulate is a messy feat.

But who would opt for the alternative of crawling into the rib cage and spending the night there with camera in hand?

And yet, there's more than one account of a freezing frontiersman bundling up in a fresh buffalo hide or crawling into an eviscerated but steaming carcass.

A sound sleep they didn't get, but kick-boxing wolves under a wet hide certainly warmed them up.

But I'm getting off track.

As you might have guessed, our cojones were not equal to the task, so we settled for the unimaginative 'cam-beside-carcass set', and we still got some surprises.

The cams were set for night photos, but circumstantial evidence told us that vultures first feasted on elk lips and eyeballs; then they scalped the faces, slit their bellies, dragged out the viscera, and liberally whitewashed the neighborhood.

The carcasses grew gaunt but were still in one piece a month later.

Only 3 scavengers were to be counted in pixels, and only a deer mouse was photographed climbing into the meat locker.

The rest tended the carrion like a garden, apparently picking tender maggots and crunchy beetles from the exodus generated by aging flesh.

A burrowing owl was the most popular visitor -- making 9 forays.

A coyote made 3 visits, but was never seen tearing hide or gulping meat.

Like the owl it seemed to harvest insects, but lacking a beak, straw was unavoidable.

The fare at this diner didn't measure up to the beef at the Carrion Cafe.

The elk was more like a garden -- a meal that kept giving.


*/ If you were too lazy to click on the first link, I'm reminding you that you won't regret reading McRae's "Reincarnation".

Young fluffies

We baited this set for small carnivores of the four-legged warm-blooded variety, and that's what we got.

But in addition a pair of young fluffies showed up and used the rocks as a perch.

They seem to be finishing their molt.

As Hans Peeters remarked in Field Guide to the Owls of California and the West, juvenile western screech owls have a loose-feathered look until they molt into their adult plumage.

It's that young fluffy look that makes immature owls so appealing.

Back to the ranch

11:08PM -- "Hornly" the resident hooter confronts brazen plastic imposter.

It was good to get back to 'the Chimineas'.

Nearly 7 months has passed since my last visit, and a lot happened during the long winter.

More than once the storms had reclaimed the ranch's roads as gullies and washes.

Then it would dry up a bit, and thinking the worse was over Cowman Ross would start to grade --  until another storm rolled in with vengeance.

When spring halfheartedly arrived Craig and the team camera trapped the accessible areas near the ranch house.  

We spent the first night reviewing a grant proposal, transferring backlogged photo files, and checking cameras (3 more were out of commission).

For dinner we threw together a clam pasta prepared by the redhead.

Craig observed that it didn't taste much like clams, and I had to agree, though I'll allow that  a second beer might have compromised my ability to discern the delicate essence of bivalves.

We turned in early, but as for the coyote serenade, I have nothing to report. It was too cold to sleep with the door and windows open.

We set cameras the next morning in a new canyon and found a fairly large sandstone cave.

That afternoon RandonTruth and Craig's assistant Heather rolled in, and we enjoyed our reunion over grilled chicken burritos.

I was ready to test my automatic owl caller in the field, but  the 15 minute cycle of the  3 v motor (a lavatory air freshener donated by neighbor Richard) wasn't performing as it had the day before.

The plunger on the air freshener didn't start the CD player.

This was a disappointment, as the local pair of great horned owls (GHOs) had just fledged their young within walking distance of the ranch house.

Fortunately RandomTruth is a man of the modern era.

He quickly copied the owl calls from my CD to his IPod, inserted pauses, and it worked like a charm.

The modern owl caller (left) and my Rube Goldberg owl caller.  

After dinner we wired my hooter decoy to a stump near the nest tree, hid the IPod and speaker beneath it, and set up a couple of cameras nearby.

My cam was also on the fritz, but fortunately RandomTruth's home brewed camera trap caught the action-- thanks Ken.

Here's what happened with his photos.

The resident GHO, presumably the male (who we will call Hornly) arrived at the stump at 11:08 PM -- 2 hours after the decoy boldly announced its intrusion into the breeding territory.

With cocked tail and wings a-hanging he had a rather ruffled if not disturbed presence.

And perhaps he noticed that the puny offender had an uncanny ventriloquistic ability.

11:10 PM -- Hornly looks in the direction of the call. 

There were no photos of an aerial strike or a wing-flapping attempt to mount, but 50 minutes later Hornly felled the brazen imposter.

12:45 AM -- after Hornly's first strike.

The vanquished hooter however refused to retreat  and continued to announce its presence as if nothing had happened.

Hornly apparently struck again and the camera captured him hooting in victory.

1:36 AM -- Tail up and head bowed -- Hornly is probably hooting in victory over his plastic foe.

And so begins another promising season of camera trapping on the Chimineas.

If we get our grant, we will start a new experiment to test survey methodology.

And one last thing, as I packed up the morning of my departure I found a can of clams in my grocery bag.

I immediately recalled Craig's wistful observation about the unclammy flavor of the clam sauce, and laughed uproariously .

And you won't believe this, but it is true.

When I carried the Rube Goldberg owl caller to the car it started to play.

Partridges in a bush

I'd never seen a chukar partridge at Chimineas until Craig sent this photo from our last camera trap set last year.

Nor have I heard its lusty chukaring call.

It's a new camera trapped bird for our Chimineas species list.

This group looks a bit fagged, possibly from climbing the hill to reach the shade of the holly-leaf cherry tree.

But maybe they were just cold.

Anyway, they loafed there near the bobcat latrine on November 19th.

The picture was taken at 1:20 PM.

Chukars are a widespread across Eurasia, and their good looks and good taste won them honorary California citizenship in 1932.

They've done well in the eastern Sierra Nevada and the inner coast range ever since.

In fact they are thick around the spring at the old toll station on Westgard Pass.

I almost slipped on the shotgun shells there.

What goes in gotta come out

Bobcat with Botta's pocket gopher,  Jan 19, 2011 at 10:36AM

With this post we are back at the Chimineas Ranch where winter storms washed out most of the back country roads.

Cattleman Ross made the roads right again, and Todd finally made the camera trap rounds on a quad.

Yesterday Craig sent good tidings,  "All cams we set out in November made it through the winter fine and there was no water damage. All are accounted for."

What you see here are a few of the recently downloaded photos from set 421 made last November.

"The amazing thing about this set, "writes Craig,"  is that the cam operated for the entire period from November 9, 2010 to February 24, 2011. That's 107 days!"

I know a lot of camera trappers make their home brews compact, but there's something to be said for 2 D cells as backup power. You just have to settle for bigger housing.

The bobcat made its appearance with a pack lunch of fresh pocket gopher, which looks like it was taking its last breath.

Take note where it placed the gopher, and its interest in the depressed area beyond.

Bobcat looks at the latrine

You could say it put the gopher on the toilet seat, because our cat, or another one just like it perched in the very same place 3 weeks later.

I don't think there's any debate about what it's doing.

Feb 11, 2011 at 12:08AM

Craig viewed all the photos at this set and reports that bobcats visited the depression several other times.

It may well be a latrine, and we'll check it out to satisfy our curiosity when the weather warms up.

No doubt the cat or cats devoured quite a few gophers between the input and output photos. 

Even camera trappers get the blues

In the canyons, the deep deep canyons, the ringtail roars tonight.

A wishful image spurs us on -- Ringtail's lithe form scaling the moonlit rocks like spider woman in buff-colored tights.

She lures us hither and yon searching for the right habitat and a dried token of her presence -- a hope-sustaining turd.

But in truth we wouldn't know one if we found it.

We've searched the literature and poured over museum records for clues.

Damn it, we've looked in all the right places.

We camera trapped rimrock, stony recesses, and rock piles. No ringtails.

We camera trapped the same kinds of places near water. No ringtails.

We learned that Texas ringtails eat juniper berries in winter. Now we're cam-trapping the juniper woodlands.

The elusive quarry inevitably comes up during Chimineas rendezvous.

On some some dirt road to nowhere it's -- "Hey look at those cliffs over there -- looks like ringtail habitat".

It comes up during happy hour.

"I swear, they're all over the place in Butte and Plumas County." I saw a dead one on Rt 70 last week, and even the kid at my local hardware store knows their favorite bait."

"Whats that?' Craig rises to the bait.

"Strawberry jam." 

"We're using all fruit jam."

"No wonder we're not having any luck."

The team collects the camera traps the week before Random Truth and I arrive.

They scope out the pictures in the field, which is one of camera trapping's simple pleasures.

Back at the lab they download the memory sticks and view the photos again on the computer to see if they missed anything.

When the photos are found wanting of ringtails Craig slides into a blue funk.

Fortunately, he's a busy man and the blues don't last long.

A few days layer we all meet and our 3-day camera trapping session begins.

These are generally convivial reunions, but we rarely have time time to set all the cams.

When we part ways Craig is jazzed to cast off with Todd and Heather to set the remaining ones.

After the last session he sent me this email.

"Lucky we didn't try to get to Hunt Spring when you were out here. It was a hell of a hike and the canyon with the spring was so steep and choked with brush, we couldn't get down to it. I might try to get down there in cooler weather.

 As it was, we left the truck at about 2:30 in the afternoon and got back at close to 8:00 pm.  We hiked the last portion in darkness.  It was still very hot (mid-90's) this past week and we brought plenty of water. 

However, it was still a strenuous hike and Todd ended up overheating and upchucking.  I felt bad for him but we sat in the shade until he felt better and we headed back to the truck. 

We actually set the cam in a very interesting spot.  We found a large expanse of rock outcrops overlooking Gypsum Canyon and surrounded by chamise scrub.  It's similar to the spot where we got Spilogale last time.  I am encouraged because the canyon it overlook is more mesic that most of the stuff on Chimineas proper.  I could see sycamores growing in the canyon bottom.  It looked ideal for ringtails but the proof is in the pudding.  Let's wait and see what we get."

I have to admire those plucky guys. Nothing like cooky-tossing dedication.  And I should mention that Todd's the one who hauls the pack.

To hither an yon

We checked Craig's set when we arrived at the ranch.

An impenetrable expanse of chamise blocked their access to Hunt Spring, so they set the cam on a beautiful outcrop.

I would have selected the same place.

Craig at the set above Hunt Spring

But only two critters mugged for the camera -- right on that boulder in front of Craig.

And ringtail wasn't one of them.

Four visits -- four views

August 17, 1:27 AM -- Day 6

Back from a few cool days on the Chimineas, the camera trapping wonderland, but I am running a bit low on material.

The previous trip was a hard act to follow, and this time there were no surprises -- only the usual suspects

So we're serving up a few shots of bobcat(s) from a 38-day set made by the team in mid-August.

This is on top of the rock pile where we photographed a bobcat last winter.

The bait is secreted in the crack between the two rocks at the right.

None of the pictures was cropped, so you can see how the cat(s) moved around on the 4 occasions it visited the set.

August 22, 1:33 AM -- Day 6

Yes, the first two pictures of the same cat.

Aug 22, 9:39 PM -- Day 11

And it looks like she visited again 5 days later.

August 27, 10:28 PM --  Day 36

Not sure it was the same cat on the last visit, because it's behind the rock on the left.

It was upstaged by a moth impersonating a bat with landing gear deployed.

Barny moves on

It was twenty-five days into Barny's nocturnal escapades when the she-pig came back.

She downed the camera trap with porcine recklessness, but paid it no further heed.

It lay on its back, three round eyes to blazing sun and starry night.

Our good fortune with Barney though wasn't yet over.

Two nights later --  at 9:41 to be exact, she appeared out of the darkness like a red-eyed Valkyrie, and the camera recorded her passing.

It was the only photo of her that night. If she touched down in the swale she kept her distance.

She made 8 more visits during the next 11 days, but we don't know if she played with the seed heads.

On each visit however she peered at the waylaid camera, sometimes looking down through her toes  . . . and sometimes leaning in from the side.

Then she disappeared into the night.

We'll be back at the grassy swale looking for Barny next year. 

Barny's adventures, continued

It seemed that Barny was a-huntin'.

Like a Peeping Tom she spent a lot of time peering -- peering into the trampled grass.

A wee sleekit beastie' was probably crepitating therein, and Barny, it seemed, was channeling the sound with her facial disk.

That's how I read the photos, but I needed confirmation.

Hans Peeter's Field Guide to Owls of California and the West made no mention of barn owls foraging on the ground . . . had we made a discovery?

I sent Peeters a message and he answered . . .

I myself had never heard of Barn Owls foraging on foot, although it wouldn't totally surprise me. This species, however, is so highly aurally inclined in its hunting that infantry-style foraging would be a surprise. Do you have videos? All owls, having pounced on prey and missed, do a certain amount of walking about and weaving their heads from side to side to obtain auditory clues, and all seem to be far-sighted and therefore back up from the point of impact and try to locate the prey by sight. 

I quickly googled up a minor paper at http://www.fosbirds.org/FFN/PDFs/FFNv26n3p91-93McMillian.pdf which seems to present pretty good evidence of foot hunting by Great Horned Owls, and it mentions other references (though I couldn't locate any discussion of the phenomenon in Johnsgard, which the author mentions. I am also not entirely convinced that his owls actually ate the tern eggs; eggs of ducks and coots not infrequently turn up undamaged in GHO nests, having slipped out of the bodies of prey brought there. Such eggs are not eaten and become part of the nest detritus. 

At any rate, if you can provide more detail or video of the foraging on foot that you have seen, I would very much like to see it. 

Then came another message . . . 

While ruminating about your pedestrian foragers, I remembered that I have seen Burrowing Owls hunt crickets on foot during the day; of course that species is highly visually oriented and more or less cathemeral, so that's no great surprise. The Eurasian Tawny Owl, however, is completely nocturnal but also forages for earthworms on foot sometimes (I've seen Red-shouldered Hawks do so in the daytime, rather surprisingly, since it's such insubstantial prey for such a large raptor).

The codger was highly gruntled with the finding, and began daydreaming about ways of getting the evidence in video.

The problem was time. The days were getting shorter and we hadn't even scheduled the next trip to Chimineas.

Meanwhile, Craig succumbed to curiosity -- he hauled his live traps to Barny's stomping ground, and though he caught deer mice and pocket mice in the neighborhood, harvest mice were the only mice in the swale.

Once again I poured over the photos searching for some hint of the elusive quarry . . . some telling crumb of evidence in the corner of Barny's beak, like the spurred femora of a Jerusalem cricket.

At last I found some frames of suspicious activity -- Oh my God! -- frames of Barny holding something fuzzy in her beak.

I dragged the jpeg into Photoshop and zoomed in.

The victim was no wee mousie -- but the seed head of annual rabbitsfoot grass, Polypogon monspieliensis.  

There was actually a sequence -- Now Barny was gripping a seed head in her talons.

Then she was either eating it or tearing it apart!

Was Barny pouncing on imaginary mice in the form of grass seeds?

And sampling them for texture and digestabilty?

The swale seemed a strange and risky place for Barny to hone her hunting skills, if that is what she was doing. 


A predator could explode out of the grass and catch the owl in the midst of her baffling game.


All good things do come to an end, don't they?

Barny's cakewalk in the swale

A marshy stretch on Barrett Creek . . . . the barn owls' stomping ground. 

Craig thought Barrett Creek was good for another camera trap set.

Though all but dry in early August, a lush swale marked its meandering course, and here and there the ground was even soggy.

It was a little oasis of greenery, but if any critter smelled water there it would have to dig for it.

I predicted that the swale would be a haven for meadow mice and their predators, thinking we might at last get a picture of our long-tailed weasel.

So we trampled down a couple square yards of grass and concealed the camera at the edge of the clearing -- set 388.

Six weeks later the team viewed the photos and found that the camera had taken over 750 photos of pigs, black-tailed deer, and cotton-tails, and not a single carnivore.

But barn owls were the big surprise.

There were 357 photos of them.

Barn owls all look the same to me, but I suspect it was one or two birds that visited 32 times on 26 nights, and almost always before midnight.

On only two successive nights however did a pair of owls show up in the same picture, and in three frames they curtsied.  

I need an experienced owler to tell me if this was courtship, threat, or begging for food.

Or maybe the introduction to a cakewalk?

Who knows?

The bigger question though is what exactly were they doing there?