Happenings at a coyote den

  

 

Big sister with her mom's brood of nine pups.

In the fall of 2022 our foursome of camera trap enthusiasts set a camera at a coyote den in Sierra Valley. It wasn't an active den at the time, but setting a camera there in October gave the coyotes a few months to adjust to it. We lucked out. The local breeding pair settled into this den to give birth and raise their litter. 

The camera recorded over fifteen hundred clips, and it took a couple of weeks to review them. Our YouTube video below chronicles the main happenings at the den over six months. See it HERE

 

Tricked again by a bear

Bunny Behavior Pop-Quiz

You weren't expecting this, but it's time for a pop-quiz. (Beware, more than one answer may be correct.)

The jackrabbit in photo 1 (above) is:
a) urinating
b) a young adult
c) an aged adult
d) stretching its legs before a race




The jackrabbit in photo 2 is:
a) resting
b) hungry
c) startled
d) looking for a mate




The jackrabbit in photo 3 is:
a) beginning to leap forward
b) spraying urine on a female
c) resuming a normal posture after standing upright on the hindlegs
d) playing




The jackrabbit in photo 4 is probably:
a) suffering from shin splints of the forelegs
b) grazing
c) waking up from a bunny nap
d) cleaning its mouth on the damp grass




The jackrabbit in photo 5 is probably:
a) hopping intermittently
b) running quickly
c) walking
d) posing for the camera


ANSWERS

Photo 1
a) urinating (QUITE POSSIBLE)
b) a young adult (DEFINITELY)
c) an aged adult (WRONG. DEFINITELY NOT)
d) stretching its legs before a race (WRONG. UNLIKELY)
(The animal was born this spring, and is not quite adult size yet. It still has that skinny look.)

Photo 2
a) resting (WRONG)
b) hungry (WRONG. DOES IT LOOK HUNGRY TO YOU?)
c) startled (DEFINITELY)
d) looking for a mate (WRONG. ITS TOO SCARED TO BE THINKING ABOUT THAT)
(This stance has all the signs of a startled animal -- hindlegs spread, body crouched, and ears forward. The sound of the camera might have triggered the response.)

Photo 3
a) beginning to leap forward (POSSIBLY)
b) spraying urine on a female (WRONG. DO YOU SEE SOMETHING I DON'T SEE? TRY AGAIN)
c) resuming a normal posture after standing upright on the hindlegs (PROBABLY)
d) playing (WRONG)
(Jackrabbits stand upright (bipedally) when scoping out the neighborhood for danger. I think this animal is resuming its normal stance after standing upright. Urine spraying is also a courtship behavior seen in rabbits and some rodents, but that is NOT what you are seeing here.)

Photo 4
a) suffering from shin splints of the forelegs (WRONG)
b) grazing (CORRECT)
c) waking up from a bunny nap (WRONG)
d) cleaning its mouth on the damp grass (WRONG)
(Sometimes jackrabbits graze while kneeling on bent forelegs, just as warthogs do. The legs may look injured, but they aren't.)

Photo 5
a) hopping intermittently (DOUBTFUL)
b) running quickly (MOST PROBABLY)
c) walking (WRONG)
d) posing for the camera (WRONG)
(Looks to me like this animal is running (technically, galloping), but doesn't appear to running "full-speed ahead".

If you answered all the questions right, you have wasted a lot of time watching animals and you have a healthy dose of biophilia.
If you answered them all wrong, you were probably thinking this was about two-legged bunnies.
If you answered one or two correctly, you need to spend more time out-of-doors.

Bean counting

Sometimes bean-counting is a necessity. In my former life as a science administrator my colleagues and I were required to count beans regularly. It started shortly after the new chief said he was going to get the scientists under control, and bean-counting became a job priority. We reported commonplace things that had been happening for years, and were reminded monthly to submit our reports to the bean-counting directorate. It was "busywork", and bean-counting became a critical factor in our annual performance evaluations.

Recently I drew upon my store of bean-counting expertise. A year and a half ago I had noticed small dusty patches near my house. I thought I had a problem -- erosion. Then I observed that each bare area had a few bunny beans mixed in the dirt. So I did what came naturally. I sorted the beans by age and counted them.



Two days later I returned and counted them again. The numbers had changed, and the fresh beans had increased in number! (The bean-counting directorate would have been pleased.)

Next, I set a camera trap. A week later I viewed the pictures and learned that the only visitors were black-tailed jackrabbits.



Each night one or more rabbits visited the bare patch, where they hung around and sniffed the ground for a few minutes at a time.



I didn’t get any pictures of the rabbits rolling around in the dust, so we can't call these places wallows. And so far I haven't found any references to jackrabbits counting beans.

As for the supreme bean counter back at the Smithsonian, a recent audit showed that he indulged in rather questionable bean-counting practices himself, and he decided to move on.

The end of the experiment (for now)

To bring you up to speed -- in the two previous wood rat blogs I recounted several of my embarrassing experiments on the climbing ability of a local wood rat. Because I had misinterpreted the photos and made incorrect assumptions, I was blissfully pursuing an experimental path of self-deception. Then I realized I had underestimated the rodent's gymnastic skills. To wit, it had been shimmying up a 3/4" pipe and negotiating the overhang of the bait station. So I used a "squirrel baffle" to prevent the trickster from reaching the bait station by the "impossible route". That experiment demonstrated to my own satisfaction that the rodent had shimmied up the 3/4" post rather than climb down the 2" PVC pipe, as I had been mislead to believe. That's where we left off.

I still harbored a belief that the wood rat could "chimney stem" down the inside of the PVC pipe. As mentioned, he had never descended the pipe, either inside or out, to reach the bait station. But I thought he could do it. He might need to build confidence using the tube horizontally before trying to go down it vertically. With the squirrel baffle on the post, the gently inclined PVC pipe was the easiest route to the bait station. (I didn’t think he was desperate enough to try jumping the 28-inch span). I hoped of course to get that one shot of the rat entering or exiting the pipe.

It rained that night, and when I checked the camera the next morning, two pictures showed the rat stepping off the pipe. It seemed to use the PVC as it would a branch.




Another picture however looked like the rat was peering into the tube.



I looked inside the tube. It was still coated with dust. If the rat had passed through, it would have been swabbed clean.

So I fastened the tube to the overhead branch -- the vertical access route. I was leary he might shimmy down the outside of the tube, so I jury-rigged a baffle from a plastic milk container. There was another potential flaw in the set-up. In an attempt to surmount the milk container he might drop to the top of the squirrel baffle below. From there he could climb up to the bait station. To prevent that scenario I suspended the bait station at the end of the tube, and removed the vertical post.

The peanut butter was untouched the next morning. The baffle had worked. I turned off the camera thinking the experiment was over. But when I came to collect the camera the next day the peanut butter was gone! Wonder rat had circumvented the baffle on the second night, and there were no documenting pictures. The inside of the tube was still dusty. If only I had a camera trap that shot video!

I consulted with neighbor Richard, who advised me to replace my shabby plastic baffle with a two-pound coffee can.

The new baffle did the trick. The next morning the peanut butter was untouched. I had enough. The question of chimney-stemming would have to remain unanswered until some later date. I just can’t believe that this wood rat can’t pass through a 2-inch pipe, but for some reason he wouldn’t have any part of it.

Reflecting on all of this I thought about the advantages of a camera trap that uses video.

That night I was sitting at the kitchen counter as my wife was cooking dinner,

"You know, sweetie, if I had a video-camera trap I could get some fantastic footage. It would be pretty neat seeing that rat in action, wouldn’t it?"

"Yeah, that would be nice", she admitted. "But it would be nice to see the leaking roof get fixed too."

Obviously she wasn't buying it. I guess my timing was off.

Ringtail's back and groovin' again

In the wee hours of the morning on January 18th ringtail paid a visit to a new camera trap site. The site was a log baited with egg yolk, chicken, and a lump of evil-smelling ground turkey (hidden under leaves--out of sight to ravens and jays). The ringtail visited the log during a three hour and fifteen minute period starting at 3:40 AM. During the 35 minutes it actually spent "on stage" the camera trap took 61 pictures. The animal was active--the average interval between pictures was 21 seconds. These pics reveal a little more about the ringtail’s strange behavior mentioned in the January 8th posting.

3:41:27 AM (photo # 5). It looks like one of the first things it did was scent mark the log. Notice that it is pressing the hips down. (Maybe you don't notice--I admit it's a crumby view). But it looks to me like it is rubbing its backside on the log. I suspect the ringtail has an anal gland or a perineal gland, and this activity leaves a personal "calling card" at the site.


3:52:08 AM (photo # 33). The "dopey phase". Ringtail seems to be "grooving" on the scent. In this transcendental state it seems to be leaning a little to one side.


6:43:20 AM (photo # 53). Now the animal is rubbing its neck on the log--possibly the well-seasoned egg yolk.


6:44:30 AM (photo # 57). Ringtail has seized a piece of egg yolk and is checking it out. I think this proves that egg yolk is a substance of interest.


Ringtail ate the chicken, but left the evil-smelling turkey burger untouched. It doesn't seem to eat the egg--it just makes love to it. In the second photo above, it looks like there is yellow stain on the back of its ears--could it be egg yolk? (Frankly, I'm getting a little bored with ringtail's obsession, and suspect you are too.)