A remote spring on the Yuba

A spring feeding the North Yuba River, Sierra County, CA

Red fir logs had blocked the spring and created pools in several places. 

I chose this one, about 75 yards below the source to set a camera because it seemed most accessible to wildlife. 

Ferns, Delphinium, various unidentified herbaceous plants, and a few small mountain alders blanketed the stream for much of its length. 

The rest of the area was practically devoid of ground cover, which I understand is typical of red fir forests.

A few species of birds visited the pool -- and you birders out there, don't hesitate to correct my identifications.

Hermit thrush

Townsend's solitaire

Saw whet owl

Robin and unidentified fledgling assumed to be a robin

I expected the usual rodents -- red and gray squirrels, golden-mantled ground squirrels, shadow chipmunks, and perhaps a wood rat. 

 

Aplodon crosses the rotten log forming the pool.

But here where I found no signs of aplodon -- burrows or plant cuttings -- one showed up on two consecutive nights. 

Aplodon wades through the water on its way to who-knows-where.

 

I thought I was starting to know where to predict their occurrence, but I guess I am still climbing the learning curve.

The sierra got its first snow this past weekend and soon the roads will be closed, but next spring I'm going back to this ravine and I am going to look for burrows and other sign very carefully.

I am also going to camera trap the length of the spring to see if there is a resident population. 

More plans, more work, more fun. 

A good trail

Coyote came down the trail at 7:07AM on March 29

We're in Marin County, and this shady trail gave me a good feeling.

It follows the contours of a steep slope, winding around the bulges and into the drainages, and all the way it climbs gradually.

Here and there the chopped duff shows where animals arrive or leave it for a steeper route to some unknown destination.

There was animal scat too.

So, I set the camera in front of a Douglas fir looking up the path, and a month later the camera confirmed my hunch.

There were 96 pictures of mammals and birds on the memory stick.


Black-tailed deer accounted for 30% of the animal pictures.

The bucks were wearing velvet antlers that looked like fuzzy bratwursts.

Deer mice took second place among mammals (22%).


There was lots of bird activity .

Hermit thrushes were on the trail at dawn or late afternoon.

Together with varied thrushes they were the most frequent avian users (28%), but scrub and Steller jays, a robin and dark-eyed juncos also visited.


Only one raccoon made an appearance,


but bobcats showed up four times.

All were moving up the trail, meaning none faced the camera. (I put out a second camera for the next go-around, and aimed it down the trail.)


And here's the only other coyote picture -- following a shower at 5:15 in the morning.

I had great hope for a camera I set at a coyote latrine about a quarter mile away, but the camera had an electrical short.

After I left that evening, it took 400 photos in two and a half hours -- filling the memory stick. A couple of moths were the only animals photographed.

Clapper rail

We decided to shoot down the Sacramento valley this week and stop at Point Reyes National Seashore to gather the three camera traps. My permit to camera trap there expires in January, and the redhead, who happens to be the spirit of Christmas in this family, suggested we do it now before things get too hectic.

Before heading down into the gulch, I vowed to pull the cams without pausing to view the pics.

Normally the redhead watches me with binoculars from the road, and radios the whereabouts of elk. This has attracted park visitors who ask, "Any good birds today?" or "Have you seen any elk?" Usually she signals me as they approach, and I duck out of sight like a commando.



There was only one lone bull elk in the area, and when it disappeared into the next gulch, she informed me she was retiring to the car to read.

Finding the first camera was a workout. The GPS told me I was on top of it, but it took me 15 minutes to find it 6 feet away on the other side of the thicket. It took more time to pussy-foot my way to the other camera sets, because the rains have turned the bottom of the gulch into a quagmire, and the elk have churned it up like water buffalo in a rice padi. It took a full hour and a half to collect the cams and posts.

After dinner I downloaded the pictures, and the big surprise was the clapper rail. This is actually the California clapper rail, an endangered subspecies from the San Franciso bay area.

The bird visited this muddy drainage site a week ago at 4:10 in the afternoon. This was a new camera trap set I made during my last visit over 6 weeks ago, and it was also my final desperate attempt to get more pictures of mountain beavers. (The wiley rodents seemed to have disappeared from their haunts where I photographed them back in July. More about them in a few days.)

The location is a waterlogged thicket at the base of a steep hill. I don't think this is the kind of place a birder would look for rails. Nearby in Abbott's lagoon and the backwaters of Drake's Estero there is more typical marshy habitat, but there is plenty of cover here, and the soil is deep and wet.

The only other avian visitor was a hermit thrush.



Rails feed mainly on invertebrates they probe from the mud, but small vertebrates like this shrew are said to be fair game. (See the velvety gray hair and bicolored tail -- it's another Sorex trowbridgeii.)



These were lucky pictures, because the camera is set for night time shots. Dim overcast lighting and shade had fooled the camera into thinking it was night. In five months of camera trapping this gulch, this is the only rail captured by the cameras. I am pleased.

Hermit thrush in "wet dog viburnum"

Northern Californian's have been complaining about the lack of precipitation this winter. Well, we finally got some. Two days ago it snowed seven inches. We're still behind the annual average, but it helped.

The storm also delivered a pair of hermit thrushes and varied thrushes. I see both of these species regularly in the ravines, but rarely around the house. With only slim pickings among the wild berries and almost everything edible covered with snow they zeroed in on the "wet-dog viburnum" next to the house.

Don't ask me what species of Viburnum...all I know is it smells like a wet dog sorely in need of a shampoo.

I staked three cameras around the viburnum, anticipating portraits of both species. The varied thrushes were camera shy, though I could hear them singing in the oaks nearby. I expected the hermit thrushes to sit and gobble berries like robins. They were far more active, and gleaned the berries in flight.