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.

Walking Rain

Centipede strolling in this morning's rain.

A good rain invites centipedes out into the open instead of their usual habit of keeping hidden, moist and hunting small prey under rocks and logs, in leaf litter or underground. This one seemed quite content soaking in a puddle this morning as I was checking culverts for first-storm clogging.

More Rain More Yoga

Yesterday the yearling deer 

danced in the first shower of their drought-born lives.

Today I freely tumbled

in the gentle waves of mountain yoga.

More rain.

More yoga.

Namaste Jikoji mountain home

Flying Foxes

With short legs, flexible forearms, and recurved claws, gray foxes readily climb trees.   

What is the "fantastic fossorial fellow according to Roald Dahl" and the final flying visitor to the Dipper Ranch persimmon tree in 2013? None but Fantastic Mr. Fox, or specifically at the Dipper Ranch, the spirited, leaping and tree climbing common gray fox.

A Persimmon in Every Pot - the Woodpeckers

Female hairy woodpecker showing a black back with a white blaze down the middle and white checkering on her black wing feathers.
09/28/13 

The sapsuckers were the flashiest woodpeckers at the persimmon tree this fall. But there were several other woodpeckers that made appearances on the ripe glowing fruit and they challenged me to finally learn the difference between the hairy and downy woodpeckers. Well, at least the hairy part.

A Persimmon in Every Pot - the Sapsuckers

An agile red-breasted sapsucker feasts on a ripe persimmon.
11/10/2013  

Everybody likes the persimmon tree in the backyard in the fall. I've written about deer and coyotes picking up fallen fruit beneath the tree, and a raccoon family climbing its branches to feast, but this fall the tree's flying visitors caught my attention. And not all those flying visitors were birds.

Antler Eve

"Look, we've got visitors," said Mr. Gingerbread Boyfriend as he watched the sunset on Christmas Eve from the new bathroom window.

Sharpy Wins

Forest sharp-tailed snake showing its ladder-striped underside, sharp-spined tail,  orangish lateral stripe, blunt nose and overall small size.

The sharp-tailed snake squeezed ahead as the favorite choice for the label on the 2013 Dipper Ranch walnuts.  All-in-all, it was a great choice.  Who knows when I will see another sharp-tailed snake on the Dipper Ranch? And it was exciting to document it as the forest sharp-tailed snake species. I was pushing to pick a rattlesnake in the superstitious belief that maybe if a rattlesnake was finally on the label, no rattlesnakes would show up at the farmhouse next year.  Hah!

Snake video follows.