The Camera Trap Tells the Story

One of my favorite parts of camera trapping is when the photos tell a story. I don't mean a single image that one can interpret, I mean a series of images that tell a tale from beginning to end. Today I pulled three SD cards and found such a series.

Chapter 1: The Coyote. I made this particular set over six weeks ago and in that time coyotes have shown up frequently. Other predators captured include red and gray fox and a neighbor's cat. But this particular coyote looks large and majestic.

Coyote's first appearance of the night

Coyote heads north, away from the camera

Chapter 2: Eastern Cottontail. About an hour later I captured this Eastern Cottontail. Rabbit captures have been common at this set, complimented by gray squirrel captures during the daylight.

Eastern Cottontail about an hour after the Coyote left

Chapter 3: The eyes have it. Look in the distance, in the direction the coyote was last heading. See the eye shine? Could it be the coyote?

Eastern Cottontail with a coyote in the distance

Here is the same photo cropped! I think that IS the coyote.

Eastern Cottontail with coyote eye shine in the background

Chapter 4: The End. A good story can still hold its own even when the action takes place off screen. Here we see that those were indeed the coyote's eyes in the distance. This particular rabbit met its end on this warmer than average morning. I kept the set active. Perhaps another story will emerge. Perhaps in that next story the rabbit will get away...

Coyote captures eastern cottontail

Jumping mouse jumps no more...

Great Blue Heron with bullhead
(Seneca Falls, NY 5/15)

I had a few camera traps set near water recently and captured a few images of one or more Great Blue Herons catching their dinners. Most of the images were fish, bullhead specifically. But one particular series caught my attention for two reasons. First, the heron caught a mammal and secondly, the images were recorded a mere 20 minutes before I pulled the camera. It was a reminder to me that timing is everything in camera trapping. Most camera trappers mitigate that concern by keeping as many cameras out as long as possible. But there is still the question of where to put them and when to move them. It makes the camera trapping game more interesting and active.

Great Blue Heron with jumping mouse sp.
(Seneca Falls, NY 5/15)

The GBH in these photos caught a jumping mouse. There are two species of jumping mice in NY (woodland and meadow) and both have that diagnostically long tail.














Another view. Here you can see the huge hind feet jumping mice use to 'jump'.

Jumping mouse caught by Great Blue Heron
(Seneca Falls, NY 5/15)

Last photo before the mouse becomes dinner:

Great Blue Heron preying on jumping mouse
(Seneca Falls, NY 5/15)

A shot with the mouse on its way down....

And its gone.

Woodland jumping mouse with white-tipped tail
(South Bristol, NY 5/11)

I cannot quite make out which species the heron ate. The photos were taken with an infrared flash so they are not in color and the distinguishing characteristic is small: the tail tip. If it is a white-tipped tail call it a woodland. If it lacks the white, call it a meadow.

Impressive hind feet of a woodland jumping mouse
(South Bristol, NY 5/11)

Woodland jumping mouse with ear tag
(South Bristol, NY 5/11)

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Laura: "Hey, I brought some chicken home from work. It's in the van."
Me: "Excellent.", as I imagine chicken tenders or even (dare I dream?) wings. But what I find is much different. You see, my wife teaches high school seniors that plan to go into the medical profession. I have written about her program in the past as she conducts a deer heart dissection each year. On this day, the students practiced sutures by sewing up cuts made in chicken thighs. The lesson was taught by Dr. Sinclair who works in the ER at Geneva General Hospital. I carefully removed the stitches from each piece and cut the thighs into smaller portions.

Fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Since I only have one camera trap deployed at the moment, I used the chicken as bait there. Our very first capture was the fisher that only recently showed up on our property (see my previous entry). I was excited to see him back and in the day time to boot!
Fisher are members of the weasel family. They are sometimes called "fisher cats" but they are not felines at all. I think that name comes from the long cat-like tail they sport. I am fairly certain this is a male due to the size. Females are about a third smaller. Below is the same photo but cropped down to have a closer look at him:


Fisher are essentially creatures of the forest. As I mentioned in my last post, they were eliminated

Close up of fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

from our part of the state many decades ago and are only recently making a comeback. When a mammal species expands its range, it is the males that are the pioneers. That makes sense. The males are the ones that disperse farther from their birthplace Who knows how long it will take for the females to catch up with this guy? Time will tell... Most weasels have a short snout (think otter) but the fisher has a bit longer of a nose than most. Not as long as a red fox or coyote mind you, but longer than any of the other weasels we have in NY.
I put out the chicken on March 23rd in the evening. I obtained these the following morning.
Here is the best shot from an artistic perspective:

Fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

During the morning visit the fisher did not take a single piece of chicken and I do not know why. At 7:09 PM he was back and this time he grabbed some of the bait. In all, he made five visits in a few minutes, taking some chicken each time. There was not enough time for the fisher to have eaten all the pieces so he must have been caching them.

Well, I have to admit he is looking pretty catty in this photo. These are the last photos to date of the fisher. That doesn't mean he isn't still around. Fisher can range over a large area and I have hopes that this guy will be a permanent resident.
With only five pieces of chicken missing, there was still plenty left. What would be the next species captured?







Red fox. The following morning, a red fox showed up. This first photo shows a nice fox in its winter coat eyeing up the chicken.

Red fox
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

However, this next photo reveals a problem. This fox has mange. That bare spot on the tail is where the mites have burrowed into the skin. The mites cause hair loss and itching. The itching causes the fox to scratch which causes more hair loss.

Red fox with mange on tail
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

The red fox made seven trips to cache chicken. Now, these bright sunny photos notwithstanding, this was a cold morning and although I had carefully cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks, many of them froze together into a giant mass. Well, on the fox's final trip he grabbed the whole pile and dragged it away.

Red fox
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

It took less than two days for all the chicken to get grabbed up by two very different carnivores. It wasn't all eaten of course and who knows if any of it changed hands again as caches sometimes get raided by others. The evening after this photo was taken, one more carnivore was captured by the camera. Perhaps this coyote smelled the chicken because it seemed to wander in front of the camera a bit and sniff around. What started as a classroom project ended as meals for at least two predators and some great photos for the blog. :)

Coyote
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Mammal #29

I had set aside some time to blog today and was planning to whine about the snow. I had selected some rabbit and squirrel tracks to discuss, but those plans all changed once I checked my camera trap. I was going to check the camera on Friday, but got busy with other things. The story was the same on Saturday. But on today (Sunday), I had run out of excuses. You see, we had some chicken thighs I had to dispose of. They had been used as part of a lab by my wife's students. They were practicing suturing and the result for me was bait for the camera trap. I do not go out of my way to bait animals, but I was not going to let these go to waste. I cut out the sutures and chunked the meat into bite sized pieces.

Fisher tracks
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

I am sure glad I waited. It is only a short walk from the house to the camera. The fresh snow obscured all but the most recent tracks. I followed a set of red fox tracks that must have been made only hours earlier as they had no snow in them at all. I arrived at the set, changed the SD card and dropped off the chicken. I decided that I should take a different route back. Almost immediately I encountered a trail that had been snowed in by the day's precipitation. I admit that I was a bit distracted at first and wrote the trail off as fox. But fox didn't fit, This was not a side trot as I had originally thought but rather a lope.
I am reading Animal Tracking Basics by Jon Young and Tiffany Morgan. They advocate looking at a trail or track and listing your three best guesses. So I gave that a try. My first thought was striped skunk (although I knew these tracks were way too big). My second critter was raccoon because coons can leave some really odd track patterns (but I wasn't convinced of that either). My third guess was the hardest of all. I kept telling myself these couldn't possibly be fisher. I have never seen a fisher on my property or even heard of one in the township. I do not have fisher habitat.
Here is another view of those same tracks. The sun was getting low in the sky and that provided

Fisher trail in a lope
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

enough shadow to bring out the detail in these tracks. These had been protected a bit by the trees and had far less snow in them than the first ones I encountered. I bought the ruler in the photo from Sue Morse when I attended one of her tracking workshops. At that workshop, Sue described the toe pattern of a fisher as "C" shaped. I could see that clearly in three of the four tracks shown here. I was still a bit in denial that these were fisher tracks. It is interesting what the mind can do. I really wanted to turn them into something, anything that I would expect to find here in Seneca Falls. I kept telling myself they were fox or just some weird skunk tracks. But I just couldn't make anything else fit besides fisher. And in the words of Mr. Spock (who was paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes): "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.". Who am I to argue with Spock (or Holmes for that matter)? But I did. I argued. I resisted. I have one more track photo to show you, the one that convinced me I just couldn't argue anymore.

Fisher tracks
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Here is as good a fisher track as I was able to find. I found it under the spruces. I learned that from Sue Morse as well. Sue told us several times during that weekend workshop to follow a trail until you found sheltered tracks that would show the details. Fisher like other members of the weasel family have five toes on the front and rear feet. You can make out all the toes in this photo.
I was very excited to say the least. This was the 29th species of wild mammal I have documented on our property (and the title of this entry). It is now one of four that have only been documented a single time (house mouse, beaver and star-nosed mole are the others).
So if I hadn't checked my camera today, I wouldn't have found these fisher tracks as the weather in the next few days will assure that they will soon be gone. But the story is not over. I returned home and slipped the SD card into my laptop. Skunk, deer, opossum, cottontail, and a few others appeared. There was the red fox who left the trail I originally followed. But my prize was there at the end. Any doubts I had about my identification of the tracks were laid to rest by several images of a fisher. The fisher tracks near the camera were obscured by the other tracks that were present and drifting and blowing snow. But once I knew where to look, I was able to find those tracks as well. None of the photos are spectacular, but I will include them here to complete the story.

Let me share two photos to set the stage and give you some scale. First, a striped skunk. Striped skunks are variable in their pattern and this individual is particularly white. Just below that is an opossum, very obscured by the vegetation. This camera only uses infrared flash at night so none of the photos will be in color.

Both are about the size of a house cat and both are in nearly the exact spot where the fisher was captured. Here is the first photo of the fisher. You can see that he is laying down tracks as the snow is busily filling them. This animal is clearly larger than the opossum or skunk.

Fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Here is the second photo of the fisher. I include it here because it shows the tail so well.

Fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Finally, the fisher walked so close to the camera that it only captured the top part of his body. I say "his" because I am pretty sure this is a male by size. Females are smaller (as is common in the weasel family).

Fisher
(Seneca Falls,NY 3/15)

What an exciting final day of spring break for me. I head back to classes tomorrow and begin the "Wildlife" section of CON 102 Introduction to Wildlife and Fish. This is a class that is required for all conservation majors at our college and the inspiration for this blog in the first place. I can't wait!

Winter tracking: Red Fox

This winter has been marked by a large amount of snow and long periods of below freezing temperatures. Although the temperature was only about 24F it was sunny and I strapped on the cross

Red fox
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/15)

country skis to retrieve one of my camera traps. Turns out there has been a lot of fox activity at that site, both red and gray. At right, a red fox noses under the snow for food.











Next, a gray fox appears after a fresh snow:

Gray fox
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/15)

Red fox leaving a trail in the snow
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/15)

I have been looking at animal tracks in the snow for years. Tracks and trails in the snow are often easy to identify. Up until recently, I have been focusing exclusively on the track itself. This winter, I have paid attention to the changes to the snow below the track. The weight of the animal compresses the snow, packs it down and makes it harder. If you find a trail that has fresh snow on top of it, you could try to gently brush away the new snow and uncover the harder lumps left behind. you could confirm track size, gait and perhaps even direction of travel.
What I found today was a bit different. Instead of fresh snow covering an old trail, I discovered an

Two red fox trails
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/15)

old trail that had been scoured by strong winds. The hard compressed snow at the bottom of each track remained while all the other snow was whisked away. In the photo at right, the new trail is towards the bottom of the screen and the older trail is above that. Both foxes are travelling to the left. You can see the shadow of my head in the photo for some scale.

Old fox tracks that have been scoured by wind
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/15)

Here is the same scene but a bit closer. I know that photos of tracks can sometimes produce an optical illusion and it is difficult to see what is depressed and what is raised. In this photo as in the one above, the upper most trail is raised and the lower trail is the fresh trail with impressions in the snow. If you look closely at the upper tracks, you can see that they are almost an inch above the rest of the snow.

Here is another view. What is amazing here is that for three steps, this fox matched the old trail perfectly. There is a good chance that this is actually the very same fox taking the very same trail maybe a week apart. I have added some shadow here to provide some depth to the photo. Can you tell the direction of travel? I can.

Compare a fresh and old red fox track in the snow.
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/15)

There are two pieces of evidence that I can see in the photo that tell me the old trail is heading towards the top of the image. First, if you look closely you can see the faint impressions of the toe pads as well as the palm pad. They are faint, but they are there. Secondly, notice that there is a slight uptick to the hard pack at one end. That is the back of the track. It is literally the spot where the leg itself bore some of the weight of the animal as it stepped in the snow

Red fox track
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/15)

I scooped the track up and held it in my hand. I smiled thinking that I was probably the only person in the world that was holding a fox track at that very moment. I turned it in the bright sunlight to catch the shadows along the surface. I scraped off all the excess snow until I was left with the hardened lump. I was pleased with myself. It had been a good walk. I felt the cold track in my bare hand and thought of the animal that had made it. It was time to head home. On an impulse, I took a big bite out of the fox track and dropped the rest. A perfect ending to my lesson in the snow.

Northern Short-tailed Shrew Nest, Latrine and Cache

Greetings everyone! I have been slow to blog in 2014 due to a very busy schedule. This weekend's wildlife encounter forced me out of exile and back into the blogosphere. On Friday evening, we hosted the FLCC Student Chapter of The Wildlife Society for a nice spaghetti dinner (thank you Laura!) followed by a woodcock walk on our property. We checked for tracks in muddy spots, looked at muskrat lodges in the wetland, learned a little about native warm-season grasses and tried to find spring peepers in the pond. But one of my highlights is always flipping over some old pieces of siding to see who might be living underneath.

Short-tailed Shrew
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

I should explain that I have been a "flipper-over" for a very long time. I saw my very first weasel when I was a teenager by looking under an old sheet of plywood. I found my first Norway rat under an old automobile hood. Childhood successes such as those made me a life-long investigator of all things flip-able. So I was very excited when our first piece of corrugated siding produced a short-tailed shrew. One of my students caught the shrew and I held it for all to see. Sasha (club adviser and FLCC Technician) noticed a nest and we concluded it was the shrew's. It was empty.
On Sunday, my wife and I took a walk to look for antlers and decided we could risk disturbing momma shrew and flipped the siding again. We waited patiently and within a few minutes, the shrew began to nose around at her newly disturbed world.

Molting short-tailed shrew
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

In the photo above, you can see a bit more of the shrew and she is clearly molting out of her winter coat. I guess it makes sense, but I honestly never thought of shrews molting before. Notice how small the eye is. Shrews are not known for having good eyesight. She slowly emerged from her tunnel and made her way into the grass...

Northern short-tailed shrew emerging from tunnel
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

There is the short tail that gives this species of shrew its common name.
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

I decided it was worth it to peek into the nest. I have only ever found one other shrew nest and blogged about it here. But if there were shrews in this nest, they would be less than two days old. We carefully peeled back the dried grasses to find a ball of leaves. And inside the leaves were eight tiny altricial shrews.

Baby shrews in nest
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

Look for five digits on the front foot to rule out mice
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

Baby short-tailed shrews in nest
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

We carefully covered the babies and I quickly snapped a few photos of the other items under the siding. There was a large pile of scat within a foot of the nest. I cannot imagine it was made by any other species (especially given how fresh some of the scat was). However, the diameter seemed rather large when I compare it to published information. Elbroch says up to 3/16 inches in diameter and although I did not measure the scat, it sure seemed larger than that. He also states that when they are feeding on worms or other soft bodied animals, the scats would be "soft squirts". Well, that certainly describes the freshest of the scats. Here is the latrine:

Short-tailed shrew latrine
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

Short-tailed shrew latrine. This is the end that was closest to the nest.
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

The piece of corrugated siding was about four feet by three feet. Besides the nest and the latrine, I noticed two spots with concentrations of earthworms. Now, this entire area was bare of vegetation, yet the only earthworms to be seen were in two small areas. They were alive but slow moving. I have to believe they were cached by the shrew. Have a look:

Worms cached by short-tailed shrew
Seneca Falls, NY (4/14)

I wonder if the worms had been injected with some of the venom these shrews have in their saliva. That would explain how they could be cached alive. The large one near the top of the photo looks damaged.
I hope I did not disturb her too much but I learned a lot from this encounter. Latrine, cache, nest.... it was all here! I will check again after the young have left the nest and see what else I can find.