Tidak ada, Tuan

"Tidak ada, Tuan." That's Bahasa Indonesia for "There was nothing, Sir". In context, it meant, "No luck today" or "Not a damn thing".

Those were the words of Jaffa, the empty-handed eel fisherman as he passed our riverside camp in northern Sulawesi. He laughed cheerfully about his bad luck. The joke was on him. (May he still ply the waters with good cheer and better luck.)

It was a "Tidak ada" day when I checked the cam at the snag with possibilities. There were 70 pictures, and nearly all of them were dim images of deer mice putzing about in the bottom of the snag. I didn't laugh at my bad luck, but I was grateful that the camera set worked.



The good news was that there were three fuzzy images of what appeared to be a wood rat and a spotted skunk. They were obviously squeezing past the camera when it fired.

The peanut butter had barely been touched. I need to think about another bait, and a better way to secure the camera in place -- like lag bolts and wire. Next time.

I cranked up the flash power, and adjusted the camera's position. I'll let it run another week.

I do have some of Jaffa's patience, but I haven't reached the point where I see the humor in going home empty handed.

Using the patch

First I went to the garage to make the patches.

I cut the carpet into 2 x 2 inch squares, and burned holes in the corners with a hot awl.

Preparing the decoction had to be done in the kitchen. So I idled my time until the redhead announced she was going to shop for groceries, as I knew she would.

As soon as she left I cut three stems of catnip, took them to the kitchen, and diced them finely on the cutting board reserved for fruit an veg.



Next I swabbed a plastic container with alcohol to erase the scent of boullion cubes. Into this I decanted several ounces of glycerin, a tablespoon of gooey black beaver castoreum, and the minced catnip. Then I added a capful of artificial catnip oil.

I didn't spill a drop, and I removed all traces of my activities, which must remain secret. I know you understand. Ever since the redhead found some raccoon body parts in the refrigerator many years ago, she has enforced rather strict rules about my use of the kitchen.

Back to the garage to sniff . . . . aahhhhh! So fine a scent! I jest not. Castoreum has a sweet tarry essence.

After lunch I took my patches, the decoction, and the rest of the kit and headed down the ravine where I made two new camera trap sets. If it works, I should get pictures of slobbering pole dancing bobcats having their way with the patches.

Camera trap trashers and flashers

Camera trappers have three kinds of "bad trips".

Camera trap theft is by far the worst, because it transforms your normally lovable camera trapper into a brooding fiend obsessed with fantasies of revenge. Since most camera trappers don't consider therapy an option, they subject their families and friends to tiresome re-runs of imaginary Stephen King-like scenarios of revenge for months on end. In due course it all comes to pass, but they forever wear a small red button on their foreheads. If you push it, you'll hear the psychodrama all over again.

Vandalism affects our mental health too. Common poachers, thwarted by steel cable and locks, are known to have trashed camera traps when it dawned on them that they were photographed trying to steal them. This is also terribly disturbing for us guys who are just trying to have fun in the woods, and the psychological effects are the same as above.

Some camera trappers find a trashed camera easier to take when the perpetrator is a bear. Salvagable parts may also give some consolation. More often the bear's infraction is seen as a compelling reason to exact reverge when hunting season rolls around. Fortunately these corrective actions have not depressed the curiosity trait in the black bear's gene pool. Whether he takes revenge or not, the wise camera trapper is advised to chalk it up to experience, and in the future protect his camera with a bear guard.

A few camera trappers, clearly a minority, accept such a loss with resignation. They are a rare lot.

A camera trapping colleague in Colorado said losing his Furfindr (a predator sound decoy) was worth it just to get a picture of the cougar in the act.

My friend Brian Miller lost his camera trap when the intended subject, a beaver, cut and dismembered the tree to which the camera was attached. He never found a sign of it afterwards, but thought the beaver might have incorporated it into its lodge. I admired the equanimity with which he accepted this act of nature. It was as if the Great Spirit had sent him a message . . . "Not with my beavers you won't".

Then there are the camera flashers. Dr. Francie Cuthbert, a professor at the University of Minnesota recently took up camera trapping to monitor predator activity around piping plover nests in northern Michigan. Her bevy of grad students (nearly all women) has been studying this population for 25 years.

The students' skewed sex ratio may be part of the problem. This past summer more nude men entered the "closed areas" and sauntered past the cameras than plover predators.

Dr. Cuthbert observes, "The beach has always attracted a few nudists, and they don't think anyone is watching, but our cameras captured quite a record." (Appreciative of the decorum of this blog's virtuous readership, she has kindly spared us the images.)

She continues, "At the end of the summer someone discovered the hidden cameras and, in a rage, pulled out the memory cards and threw most of the cameras in the lake. We need some effective deterrents for the flashers, and the camera vandals, whoever they were."

Any suggestions out there on how to discourage these miscreants? Paint ball guns? Aldrich snares? Let's hear it.

Amberrat on my workbench

It's been a year a half since I banished this wood rat from the shed for messing with my tools, and using the workbench as a latrine.

When we dragged the picnic table and chairs to the shed last Sunday, we were again assaulted by the smell of wood rat piss. The workbench was piled with scattered tools, crisscrossed with rodent tracks, littered with rodent turds, and blotched with dried rodent piss. If the dust could tell a story it was an epic of rodentdom.

Conclusion: another rat and several mice have moved in, or they're making nocturnal visits to reestablish the latrine on my workbench.

I scrubbed it all down with disinfectant, and must comment on the super-glue like tenacity of the piss. It had welded the rat turds in place. I removed all but five, which I left as a monument of sorts.

That night I surfed the web and found Chris Clarke's excellent post about Joshua trees, desert woodrats and solidified wood rat urine -- or amberrat -- which is definitely worth a read.

Then I found Joe Eaton's article on the use of amberrat as trail rations.

It's true. Some starving 49's thought they had found an Indian's cache of peanut brittle in Death Valley, and -- you guessed it -- tried eating it. It was a chunk of amberrat the size of a small pumpkin, which means it had some age on it. Needless to say, the dark inclusions didn't taste like raisins, and when the nausea passed, the party decided to seek vittles elsewhere.

They were lucky they never found out what it was.

A snag with possibilities

I'm always on the lookout for good snags. The goal is butt-rotted snags (with hollows at their bases), snags with cavities and nest holes higher up the trunk, or snags with broken tops. It's a old mammalogists' habit. You never know what you're going to find inside a good snag.

In my old collecting days there was always that cheap thrill of anticipation when you fired up the bee smoker and blew smoke in the hole. Back off if bees and wasps start to evacuate. Keep puffing if you hear something stirring inside.

When frass and punk wood start to fall get the net over the hole and brace yourself. Whatever is in there, it's going to come out in a hurry and with a bad attitude. It may also want to eat your face.

If you don't have a bee smoker, a human smoker will do in a pinch, theoretically.

We got smoking Jim Murphy to light up and blow smoke in a hole in a sacred thabye (Eugenia) tree in Burma. Jim's a herpetologist, and he became terribly excited when we told him a big snake had gone in the hole. He really liked the idea, so we passed him lit cigarettes and coaxed him to blow faster as the locals stood by and watched in wonderment. The snake never came out, and Jim almost passed out. He didn't need a cigarette the rest of the day. On second thought, I think it's better to use a bee smoker.

Nowadays you might get an idea of what's inside a snag by sticking your digital camera in the hole and snapping a picture. (There are also some high priced video gadgets for sale that do the same thing and even more.) If you decide to try this, bring a chain saw or a piece of strong nylon line. If you drop the camera, you can saw the tree down, but it's easier to fish the camera out if you've tied the line to it.

I've been looking for snags where I can get an inside view of what creatures come and go. Below you can see the inside of a promising snag not far from my house. It has two openings, one on top, and one on the side. I perched on the ladder to take this picture looking down the hole on top. The pale line you see in the photo is a stick marking the hole on the side.



The tree probably snapped off in a wind storm, and the resulting hole on top is shaped like a rounded triangle -- just big enough to accommodate the triangular arrangement of the camera trap's lens, flash, and sensor. I fastened the camera trap with a bungie cord and adjusted its angle with an aluminum rod strapped to the trunk.



The hole on the side of the snag is big enough for a squirrel or small owl. I smeared peanut butter inside the entrance and on the side walls. As I was doing this the camera snapped a couple of pictures. That's good. I'll wait a week to see if any squirrels go for the bait.

The local seed-eating large mammal is back

This morning at 4:08 the local seed-eating large mammal showed up at the "bird rock". It's Scruffy -- the bear that crawled through the tunnel last summer -- the only yearling bear I've camera trapped in the neighborhood.

I'm trying to photograph birds, not bears. The bird seed is on the ground, and the birds perch on the rock, where the camera is aimed, about 18 inches away.

Scruffy probably sucked up some seeds and dirt, and then explored the bird rock. She pulled the camera forward, but didn't try to eat it. (Knock on wood).



My season's supply of scent lures just arrived in the mail, so I'm making scent pads out of old carpet tomorrow (compliments of neighbor Richard). I'll be going for cats, but won't be surprised if this bear tries to get in on the action again. I don't mind.

A wildlife refuge recce

There were good reasons to get out of the house yesterday. First, if there's too much work at home don't hang around. Then the time change: we were up earlier than usual. Third, promising weather: the coast range was crisp against the morning sky. Somewhere on the shimmering expanses of the pale valley the wild geese were beckoning. And finally, as you know from the recent absense of camera trapping posts, I am still looking for new localities to stake cameras. Sunday was to be a recce of national wildlife refuges.

Down the ridge the aging Honda wheels, past my favorite fig browsing tree (now barren) and Rt 70's aggravating road work where the new overpass collapsed on a truck this summer. Then around the ugliest reservoir in the valley, and beyond to Route 162 which cuts westward across the valley.

I glance to my side and the Redhead is as pleased as a pooch in a pickup, so I discretely click into autocruise. (No objection, she didn't notice). I honk at numerous small flocks of road shoulder habitues -- blackbirds (Brewers and redwings) and nondecript sparrows, as well as occasional meadowlarks. Damn -- I stupidly whiz past a flooded field filled with white-faced ibises. When we reach the first stop the roadkill count is 2 possums, 2 raccoons.

First stop: Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. A quick chat with the two women in the empty visitor center. A few birders are doing the walkabout, but it's too early for the Sunday riders. We opt for the driving tour. Because we're alone we can creep along and stop where there are breaks in the rushes. The wetlands are packed with northern pintails and shovelers, gadwalls, American wigeons, mallards, teal, tons of coots, and white-fronted geese. We tick off the IDs in the checklist. Northern harriers, redtails, kestrels, Cooper's hawks, and white-tailed kites are reminders that there is vertebrate prey aplenty.

Further on the snow geese. After many attempts I fail to take even one decent picture of them. So I post the pic above with humble discomfiture. I really must study Brdpics blog for advice on digiscoping. (Why didn't I check it out last night?) Holding the point and shoot Sony against the eyepiece doesn't cut it. I need a jury rigged connector to hold the camera in place . Better yet, I need to buy a decent birding camera with a tele lens. Anyway, I thought they were snow geese, but now I think they may be Ross's geese with their shorter necks. Anyone know?

When it comes to birding, federal and state wildlife refuges are hard to beat. The agencies know this and have posted a nice Birding Trail Hotspot Map (it's a pdf at this site). This refuge provides a free telescope at one of the viewing decks, and there are two photo blinds.

The wetlands also support a healthy population of otters, coyotes, and muskrats, in addition to the usual species I have posted here before, like mountain lions, raccoons, skunks, and gray foxes. We see only a black-tailed deer.

Oh yes, polistine wasps add to the excitement by casually flying into the car, but there are no mishaps. It's the end of the life cycle and they're desperately provioning their nests. (These are the paper wasps that make nests under your eaves.)

We head south toward the burning fields, and soon we are skirting another refuge.

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Second stop: Delevan Wildlife Refuge. I knew this refuge lacked visitor facilities, but the west boundary fence is so heavily posted you get the feeling its a poachers' paradise. The best habitat shot I can get is this view of the channel bordering the road. Back in the car the redhead tells me I could have been shot. (The shotguns were barely audible).



Thinking the sights may be better on the east side, we drive through the town of Colusa and turn north on River Road, but an enormous levee blocks the refuge and the Sacramento river from sight.

We keep going, and encounter some remnants of bygone days.



Next, I take a wrong turn, and we end up on a poorly maintained road bordering abandoned farmhouses and newly plowed fields where turkey vultures are foraging like barnyard chickens. (The attraction has to be disked wildlife). Then a treat. Around a corner and down into a woody swatch we startle a large covey of quail. The road just keeps going, abruptly turning right and then left.

Somehow we manage to cross Rt 162 without even knowing it, and find ourselves unexpectedly at

Stop 3: Llano Seco. Now here is a place to come back to. No channels, culverts or flood gates here. Just a meandering stream with sandhill cranes and dowitchers in the distance. I don't know what the Sacramento Valley looked like 100 years ago, but I imagine this comes closest to it. The sign, marred with a few bullet holes, tells us that Rancho Llano Seco...was the last Mexican land grant in California to remain under single ownership."



It's late, but it feels good to know what the valley has to offer. We'll be coming back.