Title Image

Title Image

About:

This blog is predominately about camera trapping in California. We camera trap to save our souls and to teach primary school students about biology and conservation. We will also touch on other camera trapping news and musings, sets from afar, mediocre herpetology, sucky birding, and other natural history discussions.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Backyard Business

For the first time since I left my parents' house, I have a backyard and it is glorious.

The idea of a yard list was such a foreign concept and I never thought that I would be able observe so many species from the comfort of a back porch and yet here I am. It adds to that strange feeling like I am actual adult... Terrifying!

With this new territory to examine, experiment with and observe throughout the changing of the seasons, the clamor of the cities --  despite all of their draws -- are not missed.

Birds & herps are the most common fauna and right off the bat, slender salamanders have been under nearly every flipped rock.

IMG_2656
this February '16 slender was about half the size of a dime

IMG_2661

IMG_2662

The most exciting herp thus far has been a juvenile Arboreal Salamander:


IMG_1780
making use of prehensile tail
IMG_1778
climbing the great succulent pot
IMG_1775
a look at the underside reveals organs and glands
The birds have also been visiting with decent number and variety. The annual winter appearance of a Flicker has been a highlight. Here is last year's visitor:

IMG_2051

IMG_2059


Camera trapping stories to follow...

Saturday, February 13, 2016

In the news

Let's keep a post streak going.

Camera Trapping Campus has recently gone back to its name for inspiration.
My 9/10th grade Biology classes have teamed up with the mighty River Otter Ecology Project for some outdoor project based learning.

click me!


And my students made the local newspaper !

Looking forward to posting some of our adventures and misadventures.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Deadman's

Well, I am going to try and get back into this blogging thing in 2016. Lab work hasn't slowed down any, but time to stop using that as an excuse. I still have photos from Belize 2014 and some great herps from Okefenokee Swamp 2014, not to mention some camera trap stuff in the backlog.

So let's start emptying this backlog and hopefully people still have us in their RSS feed or like.

Last winter we set up on Deadman's Scree with the Codger and Carl. You can read the Codger's post. It wasn't a very successful trip from a camera trapping perspective. We hoped to get Pika or white weasels and got neither. So if Pika pictures are what you want make sure you saw Randomtruth's. Weirdo Scree Goose was found.

I set my cam under these rocks to protect it from what ended up being non-existent snow on November 10, 2014. It only ran for a little under a month because of the mice below. We picked the cams up in May with quite a bit of disappointment.

I think these are Peromyscus boylii because the ears don't look big enough for truei, but my mouse ID is quite rusty at this point, so feel free to chime in.

DSC01602 DSC01604 DSC01608 DSC01615 DSC01642 DSC01655


One visit by a Douglas Squirrel, with the ever frustrating foggy lensDSC01677


Back to the mouse DSC01683 DSC01709


My Chupacabra, Zoe, made the trip up and down the mountain with us. She was a trooper jumping over deep crevasses and holes in the scree pile big enough to swallow her. However, she would not cross the Yuba River as you can see in the last picture (Thanks Codge).

IMG_20150509_105649 IMG_20150509_122401 IMG_20150509_123325 JAKE & ZOE-30