My milksnake brings all the fox to the yard...

In my last post, I wrote about a Reconyx set I made in hopes of capturing woodcock images. I had great success with this location last year, but this spring has been so wet that our hedgerow has been in almost continuous standing water since April. So while woodcock pictures have been rare, other animals have been picking up the slack. And the water has provided a certain artistic element to the photos that I had not anticipated. For example:

Doe and fawn 

Here the infrared flash gives them glowing eyes but the Reconyx delivers with a nice crisp image. Deer, and fawns in particular, have made almost-daily appearances to this set. A few of my favorites:

Cautious fawn

The image above is highly cropped. This fawn is right at the edge of the photo so I had little choices when it came to composition. Second only to the deer are the raccoon visitors. Two favorites:

and

I don't want to leave you with the impression that these are the ONLY visitors to this watery domain. Opossum, gray squirrel and various birds are commonly captured as well. Last week, we had another species as well:

Gray fox reflected

Above is the entire image. Below, I crop it down to Mr. Gray himself.

Gray fox

Even without color, this is unmistakably a gray fox. Note the short snout and the black line running down the dorsal surface of the tail. I always like my gray fox captures :) and this guy was only one of a pair

What really makes this such a great photo is the perceived size difference between these two animals. I have to admit my first reaction was surprise. I mean, that guy on the left looks HUGE compared to the other gray fox. But of course, it is closer to the camera AND it is standing on top of a mound. This is a great lesson in how careful one must be when comparing images. If you wish to compare the sizes of two animals, make sure they are exactly the same distance from the camera or it just won't be accurate.

The Reconyx is set to take a burst of three photos then almost immediately ready itself to take more photos if the animals are still triggering the sensor. I got several sets of photos of these fox, but here was the one that caught my eye (and inspired the title of this post):

Gray fox and milksnake

Wow! A photo of a gray fox is always a "win" for me, but one carrying food is even more special. I was so excited. But had the fox killed the snake or scavenged it? I scrolled back through the photos to find out. Stay with me now, as we are going to go backwards in time...
The photo previous to the one shown above didn't seem remarkable at all when I first glanced at it. But now under closer examination, I can clearly see the milksnake in the mouth of the fox:

Milksnakes are so distinctively patterned that on my property there really is no mistaking the identification. I continued to scroll backwards --

I need to crop and enlarge for you, but there IS a snake in the photo above. Thank goodness for the pattern on the milksnake or it would be invisible in this inrared photo.

A few inches below his nose and hidden by growing vegetation is the snake. At this point, I speculated that the snake was dead or it would have tried to escape. A quick scroll backwards through the photos confirmed that, but I am getting ahead of the story...

This photo on June 24th at 9:11 PM is the last image without a milksnake. I have zoomed in to the area in question and cannot make out any bit of a snake here:

A raccoon had triggered the above image and it continued over to this spot:

The coon drags up a dead snake. It is visible in the photo below just under the coon's snout.

But after another sniff, he leaves it behind.

I have only a partial answer. The gray fox did indeed scavenge the snake, but I still don't know how long it lay there before the fox found it. And why didn't the raccoon eat it? And as I looked back through all the photos, concentrating on the snake this time, I saw that another visitor had found it too. Remember that cute fawn peeking out from the edge of the photo above? Well, she too investigated the milksnake:

Finally, an image of the snake in color! :) Identification confirmed.

There is one more story I want to tell from these photos. The night after I captured the gray foxes, a coyote made an appearance. And lucky for me, he crossed in front of the camera in exactly the same spot as the gray fox did. This will allow us a direct comparison of size between the two species. But how best to convey that to my students? Since I do not own Photoshop, I had to get creative...

Here are the two images stacked for direct comparison. But I can do better. Besides, I will be using PowerPoint to show these to students...






I made a jpeg of a PowerPoint slide:

That works, but i still wasn't satisfied. So I tried enlarging them.

Better. But if I could combine the two images, that would be best. I am working with PowerPoint 2007 here at home and the best option I could find was to make most of the background transparent. Since this is a black and white image, it made the task a little harder...

There is the gray fox with most of the colors set to transparent and cropped as best as I could (is there a free form crop tool in ppt 2007? If so, I couldn't find it.) The last step was to lay this on to the coyote image. The best part of this is that the fox gets placed EXACTLY where he was in the original photo:

Comparing the size of a coyote to a gray fox

I am pretty pleased with the results. Not perfect and I assume I will get better as I try more of this.

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

Visitors to an ever-shrinking pond...

Drying pond
(Seneca Falls, NY 7/12)

It has been dry this year and the pond in our backyard is barely earning its name. But the mud pan is good for tracking and I imagine that the small pool of water concntrates prey making it easier to catch. The camera trap is not visible in this photo but it is attached to the willow tree in the background left. BTW, this end of the pond is now completely dry so I moved the camera to the deeper end yesterday.

The mud is just littered with raccoon tracks, so it was no suprise that I captured several really nice coon shots.

Raccoon family
(Seneca Falls, NY 7/12)

I love this photo! What an action shot. Each of the youngsters is actively searching for food. The young coons will stay with their mother all summer and may even spend the winter with them. I hope to keep getting photos of these guys and watch them grow. I can't tell if that is an eye shine in the backgound. Evidence that it may be is this next photo of four young

Raccoon and four young
(Seneca Falls, NY 7/12)

Among the raccon tracks, I found a single set of skunk tracks. We only have one species of skunk in NY, the striped skunk. I have had no shortage of skunk photos this year. Check out other entries here.

Striped skunk
(Seneca Falls, NY 7/12)

Skunk and raccoon tracks have some similarities. They are both about the same size and both have five digits on the front and rear. But there are some obvious differences. The digits are not aligned the same and are much shorter on the skunk. Skunks also have some really long claws on the front feet. So when I found this skunk's tracks among the coons, it was pretty obvious.

Striped skunk track (rear)
(Seneca Falls, NY 7/12)

Striped skunk track (left)
Seneca Falls, NY 7/12)

The final track I wish to share is a little different. This one is on the camera itself! At first, I brushed it off as a raccoon. I have had experiences with coons climbing my cameras before but this one didn't look right for coon. We are looking at the print to the right of the flash. Note that only four toes are showing. That in itself doesn't eliminate coon. It is common for a toe (or two) to not show in a track, but it had me thinking of who would leave a four-toed track. The answer: rodents. And when I looked at the photos from the camera I found this:

The unmistakable tail of a gray squirrel. Look at those long whispy hairs on the edge. Here is the whole squirrel for comparison:


Gray squirrel
(Seneca Falls, NY 7/12)