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."

The Irony of Nature Writing

We experience nature outside.

We write inside.

In the presence of nature, we dwell in our senses.

Writing is about thinking.

Ghost Cow

Cow or rock?

I keep seeing the Ghost Cow, but nobody else does. Perhaps his spirit still lingers because in the seven-month grazing season on the Dipper Ranch this year, I frequently spoke of frogs, newts, snakes, thistles, even the weather, but I hardly wrote about the cattle.

I hereby take this opportunity to share photos of the Ghost Cow's brethren in the hope that the Ghost Cow will finally walk through that corral gate.

The cattle arrived in January in all colors.
Hey, there's the Ghost Cow when he was a little guy, ahhh.

Some had fancy faces.

Some had fancy rumps.

They spent most of their time grazing and drinking.

Sometimes they got up on the wrong side of the bed.

We manage the numbers and location of the cattle and the season of grazing
to increase the biodiversity of the grassland, reduce the fire hazard,
and support the region's rural agricultural heritage.

Do they know they graze in paradise?
There's the Ghost Cow on the right.

Final Note: I wrote this Ghost Cow post last night but retired before adding the photos. This morning at 6AM I woke up to a loud "wree-wree-wree" call and jumped out of bed thinking it might be the peregrine falcons reported in nearby Devil's Canyon. I stumbled outside and could hear but not see them. In between putting on boots and field pants, finding camera and binocs, stumbling over the cat, getting distracted by a Cooper's hawk, and briefly seeing 3 peregrines raptors, I saw the Ghost Cow lurking about the distant shade. In the next half hour, I caught further glimpses of the peregrines raptors, and spotted a red-shirted cowboy riding the Pasture 2 road with a steady black dot trotting beside him. The red-shirt, dog and horse rounded up the Ghost Cow and then everyone went inside as it reached 100 degrees by 10 AM. Having received their overdue attention, the cattle spirits are now at rest.

Mr. Accipiter

This small hawk was sitting on a fence post as I motored up the drive this morning. Birds often ignore the car, even if it is moving, however, they flush as soon as I get out of the car. When I saw the hawk, I eased the car near the post, set the hand-brake and crawled back through the seats of my station wagon to get my camera. Good thing I took that yoga class on Friday.

Even when I unrolled the window, he didn't budge. Mostly, he was scanning the pasture below the drive with an occasional slight head rotation and dark eye cast at my car. I guess a small black car with mud on it probably looks like one of the cows. It's an Angus car.

We've had two days of blustery rain (yeah, keep it up until May!) with sunny breaks. This morning, loose white clouds were drifting under a dense dark mid-altitude band of clouds, and perhaps the little birds and their predators were getting a few bites to eat between storms. Or they could have been blown in by the storm front.

Accipiters are small hawks that make quick dashing flights among brush and branches to capture smaller birds - aerial pursuit. We get both sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper's hawks and I can't tell the difference. I was feeling frustrated until I read 3 pages in Hawks in Flight on how to tell the two apart, including "Arguments about identification of accipiters may well account for more broken friendships and more failed marriages between hawk watchers than all other causes combined." There's a lot of trouble packed into those little raptor bodies.

My guess is that Mr. Accipiter is a sharp-shinned hawk since he seemed ridiculously small for a savage raptor and his folded tail had a notch in the end. He also did not have the extremely long tail of a Cooper's hawk that often makes me think, "Is that a raptor or a military drone that just flew by?" My reference to "Mr." for this bird is only creative license. I make absolutely no claim to being able to distinguish whether this is a male or female bird. Although they look nearly identical, there is enough size difference between sexes within each accipiter species (males are about 1/3 smaller), that female sharpies are almost as large as male Cooper's. As a lone birder this morning, I can make these claims without offending anyone. You are welcomed to share your assessment in the comments, but no complaining about my hawk photography or our friendship might just teeter under the weight of this "Artful Dodger" (Dunne).
See also:
Hawks in Flight, Pete Dunne, David Sibley & Clay Sutton, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988.