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.

A Valentine's Day tradition

Deer hearts ready for the camera traps
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/13)

My very first post to this blog (here) described the cardiac lesson my wife teaches each year. Part of the lesson involves dissecting deer hearts. Each year she brings the sliced hearts home for camera trap bait and each year "Cardiac Day" happens to fall near Valentine's Day. This year it matched up perfectly. With 14 deer hearts to set out, I knew my two cameras would be busy...




Setting out the hearts

I only set a few hearts at the first set. The first to find them was a gray fox. Note the two photos are a minute apart:

Gray fox taking bait
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/13)

Gray fox taking bait
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/13)

This set was more open than the second one and the only other visitor of note was this red-tailed hawk. Almost missed him!

Red-tailed Hawk in flight
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/13)

The second set is a bit brushier and I put far more hearts in front of that camera. Gray made an appearance here too:

Gray fox
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/13)

The hawk never made an appearance here because it was too brushy, but the crows found the bait straight away. The hearts are too big for the crows to carry, so they chisel out smaller pieces and I end up with massive amounts of photos:

American Crow at bait
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/13)

I also captured a skunk at the second set, but not the first:

Striped skunk taking bait
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/13)

Striped skunk taking bait
(Seneca Falls, NY 2/13)

The deer hearts are now a part of our February tradition. Best. Valentine's. Gift. Ever.

Now, I just gotta figure out what to get her.....

Cache and Carry (or is it the other way around?)

Gray fox
(Seneca Falls, NY 1/13)

This particular set started with a text message from my wife: "Cleaned freezers. Two bags of meat for you in shed". I grinned. We need to get better at rotating the stuff in the freezers but this gave me a great opportunity for camera trapping. I had been getting photos of a gray fox along our south hedgerow, so I put the bait out in one of my favorite spots about 150 yards down from the location you see at the right. Our weather has alternated from cold and snowy to warm and sunny.



My first image of the gray was him ghosting through the trees. Curious, but not coming near the bait.

Gray fox in the distance
(Seneca Falls, NY 1/13)

Then it rained. Literally within hours the rain and the melting snow caused this set to flood. The gray returned and was much bolder:

Gray fox with reflection
(Seneca Falls, NY 1/13)

Gray fox with reflection
(Seneca Falls, NY 1/13)

I had 17 gray fox photos in all. Many were just a few minutes apart. Gray was caching his food. Caching is an effective technique for carnivores as well as herbivores. An animal that does not cache its food can only gorge itself and hope no one else finds whats left. Some animals have the capacity to defend food, like a carcass but most cannot. Both the red and gray fox will cache food (Note: I pronounce the word "cache" so it rhymes with "cash". Others pronounce it so it rhymes with "sashay". I lived in Cache County, Utah where we didn't fancy-up our pronunciations!!).
The photo on the right is one of the best from that night. I like how the eye shine shows up in the reflection. Although there is no snow in any of these photos, there was snow around. I grabbed our small camera and thought I could find some tracks. Gray fox tracks look very cat-like. I snapped a few photos, but nothing great. The real treat was finding some of gray's caches. I found four caches within 20 yards of the camera trap. I left each undisturbed.



Gray fox tracks:

Gray fox track. A cat track would be more asymmetrical but about the same size.
(Seneca Falls, NY 1/13) 

Caches:

Gray fox trail ending in food cache
(Seneca Falls, NY 1/13)

Gray fox food cache
(Seneca Falls, NY 1/13)

The final two photos from this set were daylight photos. In fact, the photo of me rolling up on my ATV is only two minutes after these were taken. I would have liked to have seen him...

Gray fox with eastern cottontail
(Seneca Falls, NY 1/13)

The bait is long gone, as is the snow. Gray must have re-cached his food. I am still getting photos of gray at both cameras. He has moved on to other sources of food.

The dust mop and the powder puff II: CHIMERA



The uneasy truce between Powder Puff and Dust Mop described in my last post is holding. In fact, evidence shows that perhaps the relationship has been taken up a notch. Friendship? Bromance? Um, no. But have a look at the foggy photos below and tell me what you would call it:

This is the closest I have seen them. They are even on the same side of the carcass.

Opossum and skunk feeding at carcass
(Seneca Falls, NY 12/12)

Yeah, I'm not sensing total trust here....

Here is an interesting shot. The fanciest tail in all Didelphidom....

Opossum and skunk chimera

Are theses two getting chummy because they are more and more familiar with each other? Each day there is less and less food available on the carcass and each day they seem to tolerate each other more. But correlation doesn't mean causation. I am genuinely curious as to why these two were never photographed together at the start of this set and now I am photographing them more frequently together rather than apart. I don't know. But i do have one other variable to consider: There is a new actor in the night shift. A gray fox made a few tentative appearances and then got comfortable enough with the flash that he settled right into the carcass recently for some venison. Is the additional pressure of the new scavenger on the scene influencing the dust mop and powder puff's relationship? And what clever name can I give to this catish fox? These are the questions that keep me from grading papers tonight.....

Touch of gray

After about a year-long dry spell in regards to gray fox, I am getting photos on three different cameras. Even if this is one individual instead of several, I am happy for the results. I am under the weather today and not feeling chatty. But I have some nice images to share, so scroll through and enjoy.

This is probably the best photo. It seems that I have a very high percentage of gray foxes that have their heads turned away from the camera. Nice to see the face here...

Gray fox
(Seneca Falls, NY 11/12)

Two interesting photos of very different gaits. Look at the careful stride of this top photo compared to the longer pace of the lower photo. Sure wish there was snow on the ground to compare tracks.

Finally, I have a camera set on a mossy downed limb. It is an interesting set and I was intending it to be for rodents. One of my first images was this gray fox, right in the camera's face...

Gray fox walks on log
(Seneca Falls, NY 11/12)