The (almost) costly encounter

Last week was the official start of summer for me. With the semester over and the week-long Field Camp course completed, I could start attending to various projects around the house and property. But first things first... I wanted to relocate the Reconyx camera in hopes of capturing some woodcock images. I stumbled on a spot in our wet hedgerow last year at this time and got video of woodcock

Woodcock foraging for worms in wet soil

displaying and feeding (I have yet to blog about that, but here is a photo at right). Laura and I retrieved the camera from the back pond and worked our way to the "Half Hedgerow" (cleverly named due to it extending half way across the property). When we arrived, I found far more standing water than I was expecting. This area is wet into the start of summer (hence the reason it is a hedgerow and not field) but last year at this time it was merely damp ground. No woodcock would be wading in this water I assumed. But I created the set anyway, knowing the water would recede and in the meantime, other animals may present themselves.

So on May 29th I relocated the metal post I drove into the ground last year and attached the Reconyx. After a little trimming of vegetation, I was confident it was now only a matter of time before the target species arrived. The only thing that was troubling me was the high amount of water present. Compare to the photo above from last year.




The first species to be captured was this opossum. He was just pushing through.

Opossum in wetland

And then the birds began to arrive. One huge difference I have noticed between the Reconyyx I am using here and the Cuddeback brand cameras I have used for years is the way they detect organisms. The Cuddebacks have a narrow zone of detection and often miss these smaller birds. The avian captures have been a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

American Robin: This bird appears to be collecting mud for a nest. I believe this is a female as the coloration is muted. A male should show a stronger brick red color and a darker cap.

American Robin collecting nesting material

The next bird to arrive was this Brown Thrasher. As the brushy habitat on our property has increased, so has our Brown Thrasher population. Not only are these birds visually pleasing, but they sound even better. They are mimics.

Brown Thrasher

All of this coincided with a few unseasonably hot days. The Robin in the photo below is a good candidate for a male as it is darker. Note the time and temperature. About 73 degrees F at 9am?? Too hot for May... This photo is the last "wet" photo taken as well.

Last "wet" photo

The next burst of three photos was taken only nine hours later. The bird that triggered the photos is a Cedar Waxwing. But what is really interesting is how much water evaporated since the last capture at 9am.

First "dry" photo

The change was so stark I found myself toggling back and forth between these two images in order to see the difference. THESE were the conditions that would produce woodcock photos. But there were other visitors to the set first...

Foraging raccoons

One of these guys spotted the camera

Curious raccoon

Please note the position of the camera in this photo. Look at the double trunked silver maple on the left. This curious coon made its way right to the camera and I have numerous photos that look like this:

Raccoon fur

When the raccoon finally left the camera, it was positioned to take photos like this:

Camera trap tilted by curious raccoon

Well, I have had cameras nudged aside before, so nothing particularly alarming here. The camera continued to record the critters that came through. But the new angle greatly reduced the zone of detection.

A Gray Catbird was a new species for this set. Catbirds are also mimics, but not nearly as boldly musical as the Brown Thrasher. Nor are the sexually dimorphic like the American Robin.

Gray Catbird

Finally, some more mammals. These two gray squirrels seemed to be foraging. I am not sure if this is an adult and a young or a male following a female. 

Gray squirrels at camera trap

But that night the coons returned. My first evidence of their arrival was this. There were several photos taken over a period of two minutes, all looking pretty much the same.

Normally, telling a story with camera trap photos is easy. I just pull out the photos that tell the story and arrange them in order. But this story was different. This story wasn't told entirely with photos. When I retrieved the SD card that contained these photos, there was a problem with the camera. As I approached, I could see there was something wrong with the camera. It was wide open! I turned back and looked at Laura and said "Did I leave this open?" She assured me that I had indeed closed it before leaving on the 30th. Well, who opened it?, I thought. The camera seemed undamaged. The SD card was still inside. I reasoned that if a person had done it, he or she would have either taken the camera or at least stolen the SD card to hide the evidence of their presence. And to be honest, I was not entirely sure I hadn't had a "senior moment" and left without closing the camera. In fact it was a relief to learn that it was the last visit recorded above that left me with an open camera. Turns out there is no damage to the camera, but I hate to think of what a rain storm would have done to those expensive electronics! Those dexterous hands somehow managed to open the camera without tearing it down. And the camera kept working. Hours later, a coon passed by without even a glance at the camera. Notice how the background has completely changed. That silver maple is no longer even close to being in the picture frame. 

I was tempted to move the camera. After all, I didn't want these curious coons to ruin it. But I had yet to get any woodcock photos. I decided to leave the set in place and see what happened. I am glad I did...

Woodcock ground display

Heard it through the grapevine...

The goal was to get some flying squirrel photos on the new (is it still new after three months?) Reconyx camera trap and I thought I knew just the place. We have an old massive gnarly black walnut in the backyard with some natural cavities and an impressive dead limb. I figured this might be where my flying squirrels live. So on April 27th at about 630pm I made a set using Squirrel Paste brand (made by On Target and sort of smells like nutty tobacco to me) as the scent lure.
Now, I need to confess right up front that I do not like heights. Even small heights. Any ladder-work is a challenge for me. I have been like this for as long as I can remember. I am not saying I don't do heights, I am saying I don't enjoy doing heights. So even this set at about 12 feet off the ground meant that I needed to negotiate the aluminum ladder each and every time I wanted to check my results.
And I checked them frequently. I checked nearly every day for two weeks. I had to. As the story unfolded, I was tempted to check TWICE a day. But I am getting ahead of myself...

Camera trap in black walnut tree

The Reconyx is ready!

It took 12 hours and 13 minutes for my first capture: a red squirrel. Not the target species but evidence that the Squirrel Paste was doing its job. Note this guy's nose buried in the lure.

Red squirrel on black walnut tree

There were a few more photos of red squirrels on the 28th, but it wasn't until that night that our target arrived! On my second trap-night I captured a visit by a flying squirrel (not sure which species). Please note its nose also buried in the Paste...

Flying squirrel photo with infrared flash

Turns out this was the only visit of a flying squirrel over the two week period. In retrospect, was this just a lucky capture? Imagine how high my hopes were when it only took two nights to get my first flying squirrel visit. Now imagine me trudging up that ladder every single day for two weeks with the increasingly sinking feeling that it was not going to return. On the one hand, I had technically accomplished my goal. But in reality, I was looking for multiple photos (and of much better quality) of multiple squirrels or displaying interesting behavior. In the end, there was no story in the night. The action was all taking place in the daytime and it took several days for me to uncover it.
My first visit to the Squirrel Paste by a gray squirrel came at 8:29am on April 29th. That is a latency to detection of about 38 hours. And again it was obvious that the Squirrel Paste was the draw.

Gray squirrel visiting Squirrel Paste (TM)

Although I went on to capture many images of gray squirrels at this set, the rest all appeared to be unrelated to the Squirrel Paste. In other words, I started catching photos of gray squirrels going about their business. Red, however, seemed to remain curious about the Squirrel Paste:

Red squirrel with nose buried in Squirrel Paste (TM)

But that isn't the story either. Just how many photos of squirrels with snouts full of "Paste" can one write about? (Apparently, four...) No, the story was a different attractant that just happened to also be in the old black walnut. Have a look at the following photo:

Red squirrel

While I was enjoying opening day of spring turkey season (always May 1 here in NY) with my Father, this red squirrel was licking sap off of this wild grape vine. The camera, centered on the Squirrel Paste, almost missed the action. Let's zoom in a bit:

I looked for more. And in very quick succession, I found these:

 

 

I wasn't entirely sure what this squirrel was doing. It could have been a marking behavior or it could have been feeding. If it was feeding, Gray didn't seem to want anything to do with it. Only a few hours later, he trampled past with one of last year's walnuts:

Gray squirrel carrying walnut

Let me sidebar here and explain a bit about what checking photos is like for me. As previously mentioned, I place the ladder against the tree, level it with a small branch and wobble my way to the top. I open the camera and swap SD cards and climb down with great relief. I enter the house, sit at the kitchen table and save all images to my laptop (while wiping the card clean). I then start to scroll through them. With the Reconyx, there can be hundreds of photos each day. I scan through them quickly to see if anything jumps out at me or if I capture anything particularly photogenic for class, Facebook or the blog. And since I had not captured any flying squirrels, I turned more and more of my attention to Red's antics over on the right side of the photos. I have the camera set to take a burst of three images when triggered and it was the following three-photo series that convinced me the red squirrels were feeding on the vine's sap. In the wee hours of the morning on May 2nd, bathed in the glow of the rising sun, this red squirrel showed he was using his tongue, not his teeth, to feed:

Photo 1: The approach

Photo 2: Licking the dripping sap

Photo 3: Not missing a single drop

This was amazing! Did the squirrel bite or "tap" the vine or was the sap running freely from a natural break? Were there other such feeding stations around the yard? Why were there no grays or flying squirrels taking advantage of the meal? Or no chipmunks for that matter? What did it taste like? And as importantly, what had I missed among the data collected from the last five days??? But first things first. It was back up the ladder for me to reposition the camera so it was aimed at the vine and not the Squirrel Paste. 

Once that task was completed, I set down to the more enjoyable job of sifting through the photos collected over the previous five trap-days to see what I may have missed. I encourage my students to think of camera trap photos as data. On this day, they felt more like clues to a mystery. I had to go all the way back to April 30th to find my first piece of the puzzle. Check out this image time stamped 1:16:56 pm

Gray squirrel

I probably only glanced at this photo for a fraction of a second the first time I went through this file. I didn't think it was a particularly compelling image of a gray squirrel then and nothing has changed in that regard. But have a look to the right of the squirrel -- the exact place where Red was so fastidiously tonging in the photos above. Do you see the droplet? Here, let's zoom in...

Grape vine sap

This is the first photo I captured that shows any visible sap from the grape vine. And the very next image actually shows it falling!

WOW! I think I was grinning from ear to ear here at the kitchen table. I mean, who would have ever noticed that drop of sap in the first place? Well, Red did. I took a photo when I re-angled the camera:

Wild grape vine dripping sap

Now I had the camera repositioned to better document the story, and just in the nick of time. Whereas on May 2nd there were only a few scattered visits to the vine throughout the day, on May 3rd it was almost a non-stop lickfest for the red squirrel(s). It takes some agility to reach the sap and I believe Red tried every trick in the book to get at it. Here are some of my favorites:

 

 

And the very best:

The visits were frequent and they often lasted several minutes. I made a stop-motion animation from the photo bursts:

But just as quickly as the visits increased, they began to ebb. 

May 4th: Few red squirrel visits in early morning. Last one at 8:40 am

May 5th: Slight flurry of red squirrel activity at vine at 6:25 am

May 6th: Only three visits. Last one at 10:30 am. No red squirrel photos the rest of the day.

I investigated myself the evening of May 6th.

Inspecting the vine

Vine covered with a white scale. I assume it is whatever was dissolved in the sap

I cannot detect any taste to the white powder

This IS my happy face...

The story was really winding down now:

May 6th: one last capture of red squirrel for the day, but no evidence it was visiting the vine

May 7th: One visit to the vine all day (at 9:50 am), but perhaps just a sniff sufficed:

 

May 7th 12:38 pm: On to other food sources.

 

 May 8 and 9: No visits to the vine. Convinced the story is over, I create new set in our "half-hedgerow" targeting raccoons. 

I never did find any other dripping vines in the yard (and we have PLENTY of grape vines), nor did I find any evidence that the red squirrel or anyone else for that matter had damaged the vine in order to make it leak. I did a little research on the vine sap and as expected, there is much written about it from a gardener or viticultural perspective. I saw several articles that referred to grape vines bleeding. I guess that is as good a term as any.

Thank you for hanging in until the end of this long post. I enjoyed telling the story almost as much as I enjoyed uncovering it. When I ask my camera trapping students to look at their photos and "tell me a story", this is what I mean. Of course, I can't tell a story like this at every set, but then again, maybe I am just not looking close enough...