Joining the Aplodontia Club

This post is a long time coming ...

Struck out on the elusive Mt. Beaver two years in a row and on my third season in the Sierras I finally got the little guy. Fairly decent pictures of him too, but I wish more images were in full-frame. Now that I got him I can concentrate on getting the perfect picture next year.

Smile for the camera!

I was so busy right after picking up this cam at the Codger's annual camera trapping workshop that I didn't get around to processing them several months later. The nice part about that though was going back through the images was almost like going through them the first time.

Early afternoon Mt. Beaver. Also looks like he is going through a molt. Not sure what is the new coat and what is the old coat though.
Check out that human-like ear

Early evening Mt. Beaver

NOM NOM NOM.  Look at those claws!
No wonder they are able to build such elaborate tunnel systems.
Cropped image

A few more pictures, because, well why the hell not. Keep going to the bottom of the post for a short discussion on the set.

Great look at the ear

Sniff ... Sniff ... Sniff

Go! Go! Go!
A bit blurry but this guy was hauling down the tunnel right at lunch time

This set took pictures for only 6 days. A following post will discuss the flash-activating battery destroyer.

However, every photo of an Aplodontia was taken during daylight hours which is very surprising to me.  The flash still fired during many of the day photos because the camera was situated in a dense alder thicket that did not have a lot of light.

It took roughly 24 hours to get the first Mt. Beaver shot. A Mt. Beaver then visited the camera every day (+5) until the batteries died.

• Day 2: 1:45PM and 2:31PM (considered 1 visit)
• Day 3: 11:03AM
• Day 4: 4:54PM, 5:16PM and 5:24PM (considered 1 visit)
• Day 5: 6:32AM and 7:13AM (considered 1 visit)
• Day 6: 7:11AM and 1:48PM (considered 2 visits)

I think these are likely all the same individual even though the amount of red/brown looks a bit less in some images than in others. I think that might be just an artifact of the camera, but maybe this is more than one critter.

UPDATE:  Per RT's suggestion in the comments another cropped, image.