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."

Don't Park Here

If you've visited recently and parked your vehicle at the Dipper Ranch, did you notice a flowery scent as you drove away?

Wolf's Milk - A Bioblitz Preview

Wolf's milk - actually not a fungus or a Hostess pastry - a fact I learned while browsing iNaturalist   

The National Park Service is having a bioblitz at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in the San Francisco Bay area on March 28 and 29, 2014. Sponsored by National Geographic, it's gonna be huge. They expect thousands of citizens to join over 300 scientists observing and documenting the plants and animals of Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo Counties at 12 locations of GOGA (the National Park Service's four-letter code for this park).

A bioblitz is an event where animal and plant species are identified in a specific location over a short period of time. The eyes and ears of students and citizens are led by scientists to cover as much area in the park as possible and to confirm identifications. The inventory is useful to understand the park's ecology but it is also a great way for everyone to experience the biological richness of our public lands and the techniques of scientific inventory.

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.

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.

Trackers at the Dipper Ranch

The Bay Area Tracking Club visited the Dipper Ranch on September 9, 2012. With about 20 people attending, we set off on a dirt road towards the Newt Pond and the Newt Spring to look for animal sign.

Curious trackers examine the evidence.

There were lots of deer tracks and some coyote and bird tracks, and we found two types of hairs caught on a strand of a barbwire fence about 8 inches above the ground. Coyote and a high-jumping rabbit, coyote dragging rabbit under the fence?