Who Scrapes There?

The first time a bobcat goes by the camera in this time period is November 12 near first light.   

A few days after I posted the Puma Scrapes story, I took a hike with my neighbors. To celebrate each new year, we take a hike across our rural neighborhood, usually from one house to another. On this year's Cuppa Sugar Hike, we found a fresh scrape on a trail at the edge of a wooded area.

"What animal left this mark?" we wondered. Especially since the scrape was unusually shaped, more of a square than a rectangle, and with a long narrow scat at the back.

"No problem," I said, "I've got a wildlife camera mounted just uphill. We'll check which animal went by after the rain five days ago and then we'll know."

Puma Scrapes

Puma delicately poses on huge paws at the Dipper Ranch night of October 4, 2015.   

When I lived in Florida, we called them panthers. I never saw a Florida panther, but in the 1980's, there were only about 30 Florida panthers left and I didn't know much about Puma concolor then. Officially, they are called mountain lions in California, and cougars seems to be the most popular name in other western states. These days, I like to use the word puma because it's short.

Max Allen, a researcher with Santa Cruz Pumas Project at the University of California Santa Cruz, posted an interesting piece called How Pumas Communicate Through Scent Marking on the National Geographic Wild Cats blog. In the 15+ years I've worked outdoors in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I've seen four pumas.  But I've seen lots of puma sign now that I know what to look for: scat, tracks, scrapes, kills and scratching logs.

Bioblitz - the wet part

California slender salamander. Tiny but if you look, they are ubiquitous in even the smallest of damp locations. Robert Stebbins found that the total number and perhaps the total biomass of either this slender salamander or another common small salamander, the ensatina, was greater than any other resident vertebrate in a Berkeley redwood forest,  (Stebbins and McGinnis, 2012).   

The bioblitz at Golden Gate National Parks continued through Saturday, March 29 with the official deadline for submitting all observations of plants and animals in the parks at noon. On Saturday, it was raining. Real rain like we actually live on the edge of a giant reservoir of water and arbitrator of weather - the Pacific Ocean. Rain like we haven't seen in two years. Rain that cut the number of attendees at the inventory hike Naiad and I led at Rancho Corral de Tierra from the 30 who signed up to five brave souls.

We led those five brave hikers into the park in the rain, past the fungi, insect, bird and botany teams, and into a forest. Many of the Monterey pines had foam streaming down their trunks in the rain which formed frothy piles at the base of each tree. I've seen this phenomenon before but never with so many trees.

A Skunky Mood

This striped skunk has walked by this wildlife camera many times and ignored it. For some reason on this particular night, the striped skunk (presumably the same striped skunk) decided to charge the side of the camera. Was there a strap blowing around? Was the skunk in a testy mood? Was there an animal behind the camera? I don't know, just one of those camtrap mysteries.

Bad Bad Bushnell Brown

Arrggh, that sinking feeling when I open up my Bushnell HD Trophy trail camera and the date says January 1, 2013. It's not January and it isn't even 2013. Rats, the camera reset itself! I know this means the Bushnell has probably missed some shots and quite possibly has a completely blank memory card.

I check the battery level, the memory card, and every one of the 20 steps in the complicated menu. And I check them again. Everything seems to be working fine, at least right now. One of the batteries is sticking out a little. I tap it. Was it loose or not? I don't know but the rangers are waiting for my advice and I've got a dreadful feeling.

(click Read More to continue but be forewarned there are gory photos of a deer carcass coming up and predator photos)

Zombie Rodent

Mountain beaver (a.k.a. aplodontia) is one of the unusual mammals you get to practice camera trapping on at this workshop in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. It took me several months to realize why this particular camera, Wingscapes Birdcam 2, would occasionally get great close-up nighttime photos with flash but never more than one. Something about the electronics in this model shut the camera down after one or two flash photos. This model is now discontinued. For more info about this unusual burrowing mammal go here and a fellow alumnus has better photos of the zombie rodent here.  

Dr. Chris Wemmer announced his 2014 camera trapping workshop - if you ever wanted to get serious about using trail cameras to understand the mammals on your study site or the back-40 then this five-day adventure is for you. In 2014, it will be July 13-18 at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus in beautiful Yuba Pass, California.

Fall Fashions at the Spring - Bold Stripes

Bold white stripes framed by a pert beanie cap on one end and a fluffy white and black tail on the other end = striped skunk  

When we were teenagers, my five sisters and I used to wait excitedly for the fall fashion edition of Vogue magazine. Like any of us ever spent $700 on a pair of pants.  Zoom forward to today at the Dipper Ranch where the boys are running around saying "Too many words!"

In the next few posts, I thought I would feature what the wildlife are wearing to the Newt Spring in the late summer and fall.

Thinking Backwards: the Landscape

Not much grows on a scree slope
Photo by randomtruth.  

Part 3: are you still with me? Still thinking backwards? This is my favorite part - the landscape state of mind. You are crossing a natural area, hyper-alert but at the same time in a dreamlike trance since you are not task-oriented, just absorbing as much of your surroundings as possible. Collecting images, sounds, and maybe a little scent. As an ecologist, I'm looking for clues on how the pieces fit together. This natural area is not just a list of plants and animals, but a constant flow of energy with any little click being some type of adjustment between the animate and inanimate. Even if I don't recognize these ecological relationships at the moment, my observations might help figure out patterns of the place later.

Every day in our wildlife camera trapping workshop at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, we ventured into the beautiful montane landscape of Yuba Pass to practice our skills in a new environment. One morning, workshop instructor Dr. Chris Wemmer led the class across the North Yuba River in search of the bushy-tailed woodrat (Neotoma cinerea). But first we had to climb the side of a mountain.

Thinking Backwards: the Animal

The bushy-tailed woodrat leaving its den in the scree slope at night.  

We climbed the side of a mountain at Yuba Pass, found the sought-after den entrances, and now it was time to mount a trail camera in order to take photos of the bushy-tailed woodrat (Neotoma cinerea). It was the third day of our wildlife camera trapping workshop at the Sierra Nevada Field Station, and we had already experimented with many techniques for mounting trail cameras on trees or on stakes driven into the ground. But the bushy-tailed woodrat lives in screes slopes which have no trees or soil. When you've got lots of rocks, you use rocks.

As one of my classmates in our trail camera workshop described, setting a camera is like walking onto an empty theatre stage. You've read the lines but now you must flesh out the play by imagining the future actors and scenery.  With a new camera in hand and rocks underfoot, I needed to conjure up my next few steps. At the high elevation, I felt closer to the ground, the animal level, but the logistics of technology were slipping away.

Thinking Backwards: the Camera

A bushy-tailed woodrat eating mystery food in the Sierras.
This photo was adjusted for exposure and sharpness.  

A scree slope seems like a barren landscape to search for wildlife. Shrink yourself. Then imagine scampering the maze beneath the jumbled rocks. Suddenly the underground landscape has warm-blooded potential.

Standing on a scree slope above 6700-foot Yuba Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountain range is a good place to take a mental leap. I wanted to photograph bushy-tailed woodrats (Neotoma cinerea) which den under the rocks but I was struggling to understand the new Bushnell HD Trophy camera. You would think that setting up trail cameras, aka as wildlife cameras, is all about the technology - the sensors, trigger, flash, and digital equipment. But you also need a feral imagination since you are not going to be there when the camera is triggered. You have to picture the animal moving in the landscape, often at night, and contrive a plan to steal a few moments of its life on a carefully set camera.

Cam Trap Mistakes: The Stubborn Brush Rabbit

A brush rabbit in a willow thicket at dusk.
Photo taken with Moultrie M100 trail camera and post-processed (cropped, exposure and contrast adjusted).  

In July, I took a five-day workshop in the Sierras on photographing wildlife with trail cameras. It was an excellent workshop at the beautiful Sierra Nevada Field Campus. There are no good books yet about using remote cameras to photograph wildlife (aka camera trapping), but there are good blogs on the adventures of experienced cam-trappers with gorgeous photos and exciting videos, websites that review trail cameras, and trail camera discussion groups.*

I learned a lot at the workshop especially from my mistakes. What the heck, why not share my cam trap bloopers? In these next few posts, I will reveal the trials of a novice cam trapper and throw in my subjective reviews of a few commercial trail cameras with example photos (and maybe videos?).

First up is The Stubborn Brush Rabbit.

A Fox Dines on the Jepson Manual

A grey fox smiling at a tasty meal or the Flehman response?

While I was away at a workshop in the Sierras, the mice did play. And so did the cats. Somehow, this resulted in a grey fox eating dinner off my Jepson I manual. How did this happen? How did a botanist end up playing with foxes? Learning is a good thing and sometimes it changes your perspective.

Tracks Upon Tracks

A mountain lion journeys along the old stage coach road.

When Naiad and I returned to the house after our afternoon of tracking at the end of the road, we excitedly checked the memory cards from the wildlife cameras to see what "hits" we got over the last few weeks. Mostly cows, lots of cows. Cattle are irresistibly drawn to the ribbon of an open road.

The trusty old Recon camera, however, had a short series of very interesting photos taken three mornings earlier:

Tracks at the End of the Road

To find a raccoon, be a raccoon 

"We could go to the end of the road," I prompted Naiad, trying to keep her moving and distracted. "This is an old stage coach road. It probably went back to lumber mills and then the Shriner's camp before it became a state park." Now, I explained, the old road ends at a remote location on the Dipper Ranch where a steep ravine has been washing out crossings and culverts for a long time. "Maybe a hundred years!" I claimed to make the dirt road sound exciting.

Coyote Brush Highway

Hot day on the Coyote Brush Highway for a coyote pup.

The game was up.  With their keen noses and my sensitive skin, I didn't expect to get additional close-up glimpses of the coyote pups as I did in June.  To keep track of their progress, I decided to place wildlife cameras near the brushy thicket where I frequently saw them. Not only did I suspect the coyote brush sheltered their den, but soon I learned how important the brushy structure was to many other types of wildlife.