The problem with sleeping in caves

The problem with sleeping in caves is that large cats, coyotes, wolves, bears and pumas like to sleep there too.

Not all the time, of course, but often enough to cause problems if you happen to be sleeping there already.

When snow is in the air a field biologist camped in the rimrock might want to drag his sleeping bag into a nice leaf-filled den like this one on the Wind River Ranch in New Mexico.

And that's exactly when the larger critters are likely to show.

Thus the evolution of snoring that sounded just like a cranky bear.

[Just discovered this photo on the internal memory of one of my s600s. It was taken at 4:00AM on Nov. 2, 2007]

The rimrock path

THIS is the place, I thought.

A sandstone arcade where ringtails, foxes, bears, and pumas stroll. And maybe an occasional hog-nosed skunk. Perhaps even a coyote now and then.

The kind of place where local wildlife might surprise an edible neighbor.

A long low recess at the foot of the rimrock, clear of rubble, protected from above, but only a few leaps from escape in the boulders and thickets below.

An intimate place and a camera trapper's haven.

I sprinkled a few drops of fermented fish oil on the rock, and it worked.

But not on bears or pumas.



Providence rewarded me my usual allotment of wood rats and gray fox. Wherever I go they are waiting to give me their pictures.



I'm not complaining, because sooner or later something unusal happens, like the monogamous pair in the same picture.



Or a meeting of fox and skunk, both drawn to that delightfully smelly smudge of fish oil.

Though the skunk is partially hidden, its flag is up, ready to about-face and lay the fox low with a blast of hideous gas.



Br'er fox is not about to be skunked. His flag is also raised, but for the moment he's avoiding eye contact with the little bully. Or maybe his gaze is on the camera.

Either way, I suspect he's been skunked before.

New bears move in

A new mama bear and two cubs showed up at the bear den, and it looks like they intend to stay. Brian just checked the cam and emailed me this selection of pictures.



Mom gathered grass and shrubs and pulled them into the burrow.



The two cubs are bigger than the last two, which means they are yearlings.



They earned their upkeep by helping mom.



Whether mom is pregnant or not, this will be the cubs' last winter's sleep with her.

I think we are witnessing the beginning of a long winters' nap. Damn, these camera traps are fun!

Two more den shoppers

There were other visitors to the bear den. The desert cottontail lingered in front of the den, and the white-throated wood rat was seen coming and going. This picture makes me wonder if the rat has a stick nest deep inside.



And I was wrong; at least one of the cubs went into the den, though we can't be sure it did any work to prepare it for the winter sleep.



The camera didn't go unnoticed either. The claws look short enough to be those of a cub. Knock on wood. We were lucky it was restrained in its examination of the camera.

Three bears and a bobcat

Brian checked the cams at Wind River Ranch and emailed a few jpgs.

Good dens are like prime real estate. Several den shoppers examined the burrow under the rimrock.

The bobcat sniffed at the entrance. If it entered the camera missed it.

Bear biologist Tom Beck saw this den last year and thought it was the work of a bear. The pictures seem to support the idea.



Mama bear came with two cubs, and plunged right in to start renovations. It looks to me like she’s digging, but the kids haven’t learned to pitch in.



The pale cub is a pastel color phase that is not particularly common. At this latitude cinnamon colored bears are seen more often.

These cubs are small enough to have been born this year. They may still be suckling, but are taking as much solid food as possible.

We can expect the three bears to den together. Black bears breed every other year when times are good. Lactation inhibits estrus in the summer following birth. That means mama is into motherhood, and doesn’t put up with amorous males.

It isn’t till the second year that the family breaks up. When mama seeks carnal liaisons with strangers the youngsters get a rude awakening.

The problem for these little guys is the mast failure. There was nary an acorn to be seen when I was schlepping around the rimrock, but there were plenty of rosehips. Under these conditions the little guys might make it through the winter but could starve in the spring.

It boils down to the ability to put on fat. A trim bear can survive the winter because in dormancy the metabolism gears down to a low idle. But survival is iffy come spring, especially when it comes late. Fat bears still have energy to burn; skinny bears don't. 

So let us leave our bears for now, and hope all works well. The camera will be waiting for their next appearance.





References

Bridges, A. S., J. A. Fox, C. Olfenbuttel, and J. R. Vaughan. 2004. American black bear denning behavior: observations and applications using remote photography. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 32(1):188-193

 

Doan-Crider, D. and E.C. Hellgren. 1996. Population characteristics and winter ecology of black bears in Coahuila, Mexicp. Journal of Wildlife Management, 60(2):398-407

Rogers, L.L. 1987. Effects of food supply and kinship on social behavior, movements, and population growth of black bears in northeastern Minnesota. Wildlife Monographs No. 97, 72 pp.

Return to the rimrock

The caves and recesses in the rimrock were too intriguing. I decided to leave three cameras at Wind River Ranch, and Brian assured me he would check them, change batteries, or pull them, as desired.

I made a hurried hike to the bluffs with Luna the day before we left.

I left one camera at a large burrow dug at the foot of a bluff. This wasn’t a gopher burrow. It was big enough for a small bear or a coyote.



I left another at the fissure cave that Luna refused to enter.



And the third camera I left at a long overhang where I imagined ringtails playing in the moonlight.

Whatever pokes its nose in there, settles done for a long winter's sleep, or eats the camera -- you'll hear about it.

Well turned legs

A picture of a pair of well turned legs was not my goal.

Experience has taught me that when time is limited your chances are slim of getting camera trap photos of most large mammals, and especially predators.

So I set one cam on the prairie, hoping for kangaroos rats and pocket mice, which visit bare dirt to luxuriate in a nightly dust bath and dine on wind-blown seeds.

I laced the soil with sunflower seeds, and thought it was a done deal.



Instead of rodents I got elk.



Sometimes you're predictions come true, and sometimes you get a surprise. Either way, the results are usually welcome.

Rimrock rambles

I have a powerful attraction to rimrock. For recreational land-based exploration it's the best.

That’s why the Millers’ dog Luna and I rambled the rimrock for the better part of two days.

The bluffs hold many secrets, and the alluvium guards the bluffs. So you don’t get there without a workout.

Of course that doesn't apply to dogs. Luna raced up the hill effortlessly, zipped here and there through the thickets, then raced back to me, as if to ask what’s taking so long?

I trudged around the boulders, and squeezed through the scrub oak which had an annoying way of whipping off my hat and snatching at my glasses.

“You little #@*& . . . (puff puff) . . . you thought you were going to put out my eye, but not this time . . . ”. (Yes, I attribute motives to vegetation and curse it. It's a good coping mechanism.) 

The rock wall was my reward. There was grass, and thin trails skirted it here and there.



I dropped my pack, felt cool air on my wet back, and took a long draft of water. The pant-smiling Luna watched me for a few moments and then took off again.

Then I explored and realized that the rimrock feeds the soil at its feet. Pellet middens of woodrats may mummify, but a lot of it washes out of the fissures. The same must hold true for bat guano in caves and cracks. All these little guys eat a lot of roughage, you know, and are highly regular.



Cliff swallows make their own contributions, and then there are the bones -- rodent skulls and rabbit bones dropped from raptor eyries above and washed into rows of storm flotsam. (The better specimens now decorate the fireplace mantle in Brian's office).



There were the overhangs with smoked ceilings and charcoal.



Most intriguing though were the slab caves, fissure caves, and recesses. Was Luna's caution due to some lingering bearish scent?



As I GPS'd one of the sites, I remembered the amusing tale of some South Indian colleagues who tracked a radio-collared leopard to a similar bluff cave in Mudamalai National Park. They were peering into the dark hole when the cat exploded from the opening like a snarling cannon ball.

It was getting late when Luna refused to heed my call. Then there she was above me, telling me there was another way back. I followed her up to the plateau through a deceptive cut in the rimrock, and we made our way to Falcon Canyon's bluffs. We climbed down the side canyon and followed it to the Mora River and home.

There's something to be said for canine company.

One cooperative beaver

I staked the camera at the end of the dam where the water rushed through the gap. This is where I expected the action, but it was impossible to set the camera there. So I pointed it at the dam itself, thinking Bucky would waddle over the sticks to reach its construction site.

It was late afternoon, the mossies were thick, and Brian waited patiently as I went through the usual self-torment. Would the rodent amble across the dam, or would it swim to the gap? Would it incorporate the camera into the dam, as it apparently did with Brian's camera a couple years ago? And how often did it visit the dam? (I had only 4 days to get the picture). Or was it even here? Maybe it was working one of the less accessible dams on the Mora River.

I took a small bottle of birch oil from my pack -- this minty-smelling stuff IS improving the smell of that nasty sack -- and dipped two thin twigs into the bottle. I laid them on the dam at two points in front of the camera. Then I took a deep snort of the oil. Aroma therapy.

Well, at the end of the week I found that it worked. Bucky stopped long enough to sniff the first twig.



And then the second one.



All but one of the other photos were false triggers. That one picture made it clear that the engineer was busy at the other end of the dam.

That made for one cooperative beaver and one happy codger.



Postscript: Brian informs me that since our visit the beaver(s) have constructed a new dam, downstream from this one. Check out the benefits of beaver dams in Laura Klappenbach's Wildlife Blog.

A week at Wind River Ranch

Hdq at the ranch.

Last month buddy Dave and I flew to New Mexico for a week on the range.

And wouldn’t you know it? Orbitz doesn’t list Southwest flights. How come? Too much competition for the big guys? So we went online and got a senior’s deal on Southwest. This is an airline that doesn’t charge $15 for your suitcase, and what's more, they feed you peanuts.

My old friend Brian Miller (remember robobadger?) was reading the paper when we found him at the Albuquerque airport. After endearing ourselves to the parking lot lady trying to find the ticket (I was sitting on it), we hit the road and rolled northeast toward blue skies and billowing thunderheads.

Riparian habitat restoration area.

There was a road-side stop to tank up and gobble tamales, and three-hours later we arrived at the Wind River Ranch -- a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving the ecological heritage of the southwest.

What a place. The ranch straddles some stunning landscapes against the backdrop of the Sangre de Cristo Range, and the Mora River runs through it. The Santa Fe Trail and Fort Union are a stone’s throw away, and the short grass prairie, pinon-juniper and oak woodland probably look much as they did a couple hundred years ago.

A most lovable lizard.

Philanthropist and art collector Eugene Thaw created the ranch. A man who appreciates fine things, he also knows that under normal circumstances such things don’t self-maintain. His goal is to preserve this 4500-acre landscape as a window into the past, so future generations can make the connection between human welfare and nature.

The land was used by the Jicarilla Apache and Picuris Pueblo when Mexico issued the Mora Land Grant, and it was also used by Navajo, Ute, and Comanche.

But a lot has changed since then. Bison and prairie dogs are missing, and prairie invaders like snakeweed and pinon/juniper are edging out blue grama and buffalo grass. Cheat grass has also made an appearance, having already taken over large areas of the west.

Prairie pinon-juniper interface.

To make it ecologically whole again, Thaw hired Brian as executive director. For having the right instincts, knowledge and temperament he couldn’t have picked a better person. And to underwrite the staff and operations he created the Wind River Ranch Foundation.

Brian forged a partnership with the Jicarilla Apache and Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative to establish a free-ranging herd of bison, and several private groups have helped to re-establish black-tailed prairie dogs. This year he is expanding riparian habitat along the flood plain of the Mora River – critical habitat for the endangered willow flycatcher.

Education is a major theme. School children and young scientists use the ranch as a laboratory to document baselines of flora and fauna, measure change, and understand the dynamics of the ecosystem. WRRF also tries to fund grad student projects from money raised for ecological restoration projects.

Our mission, and you won’t believe this – was to establish a reference collection of grasshoppers. Don’t laugh. There are more than 160 species in New Mexico, they’re big in the food chain, important in nutrient cycling, and they have major economic importance. (Not to mention the eggs from Brian's grasshopper-foraging chickens.)

As buddy Dave can tell you, entomologists take a lot of crap, because the man on the street is biologically challenged. Recently Dave had to remind some snickering birders that if it wasn’t for grasshoppers their life lists would be a bit shorter.

I wasn’t far from fellow bloggers Beverly, Steve Bodio, Chas Clifton, and Smokin Bill Schmoker, all of whom I would enjoy meeting, but grasshoppers and rimrock beckoned.

Besides we had assignments. More on that soon.

Dave instructs the Miller girls on prepping hoppers.