Brush Rabbits on the High Plateau

Well 20 feet above sea level or so.

Brush rabbits, Sylvilagus bachmani, are all over Santa Cruz County and in the habitat that we are placing our cameras.  Every time we go to place a camera or go to pick up a camera we see handfuls of brush rabbits without even trying.  They are all over the place as if they are breeding like, well, rabbits.  However, on our first three sets we never captured a brush rabbit, even though we had seen rabbits within 50 feet of camera locations.

Photo by ecov ottos

It took the fourth set and 31 total days of camera trapping to finally get our first brush rabbit.  They showed up 8 times in 22 days at this set. Not record breaking numbers but more than we had been getting at other sets.  As you can see this set is really open grassland with some interspersed brush.  Shockingly (at least to me) every single one of our Sylvilagus captures were on IR after the sun had gone down, but not too long after.  The rabbits were foraging on a moderately used game trail.

Here are a few of the visits ...

Passing through

Standing at attention

Laughing at the camera

Busy foraging