Finally Comes Up Heads

Okay, so if you called heads instead of tails you had 1:12 odds of winning the toss. Not great odds at all, but better than I may have left you believing.  Yes one bobcat turned up heads. It came down the trail, stopped for a sniff, right about where I knelled down, but did nothing else, I swear.





After a sniff it turned around and found something good to check out. Maybe it was another bobcat's poop, maybe the skunk left something, or maybe it was just feeling a bit frisky.






And then it turned and hammed it up for the camera




I swear I did not use a ball of yarn above the camera as a lure.

This Bob' did not seem to be scared of the flash, but rather thought she was Angie on the Red Carpet.

The camera caught this silly kitty in good focus. Is that a tick on her ankle? Maybe she wanted us to remove it for her.

Overall, I am very happy I finally got a rufus to look into the eye of the homebrew.

Both Sides of the Coin

Of the 29 medium mammal photos in this set 24 were of bobcats. That leaves us five pictures of the others.

Here are two.

Heads





And Tails





This skunk, I assume it is a single individual, passed the camera on its way down the ravine and then again on its way back up the ravine six and a half hours later.

The other 3 images were of foggy raccoons. Portraits that are not good enough for publishing.

Calling Tails

If my last camera trap sets were a coin flip.

Heads or Tails.

Call it Quick.

I hope to FSM that you chose tails. I have a streak going about as good as the NFC had in Super Bowl coin flips.

Oh bobcats.





I got enough bobcats to make Trailblazer jealous for weeks on end, but they were a bunch of tails. 24 of 65 images with critters in them were bobcats. That's 37% for you non-math majors. Quite a haul of bobs. But almost all tails.

Distinct tail pattern. Yin and yang of black and white. Slight U shape of the white tip. Analogous to a fingerprint or does every bob tail have this pattern?

Overall not a bad set. 55% of 119 total images had an animal in them. The wind got a huge chunk of images in one day that dragged that average down. The set was up for 13 days and we got 13 individual visits for a perfect 1 visit/day. The camera took 5 positive images a day, so quite a few of the critters hung around the camera for a bit

Over the 13 days we had 9 separate visits by Lynx rufus. As you will see by these pictures I think they were all the same individual, but I am not sure if tail pattern (see above) is a reliable way to discern individuals. Each and every time the bobcat was going up the ravine showing its tail to the camera.

Possible other individual. Look at the black unconnected bands above the tail tip. Inconclusive in my mind.

I will have to go back through the archives and see if we can pin this (these?) as bobcat mom, pop, or kitten from early 2011 or if the tail pattern is just a red herring.

Either way, I sure enjoy our coastal bobcats and still get excited every time they show up on the little LCD screen. I still need to see one in person in 2012.

Waterfowl at YLR

It was a beautiful morning Thursday at Younger Lagoon with a wide variety of waterfowl and other birds out and about.

A pair of white tail kites were harassing a marsh hawk then perched on the a wire fence and coyote bush.

Mallards

Male Green-wing Teal

His female traveling partner

A pair of Spoonies

Lesser-Scaup?

A male heavy group of Ring-neck ducks

Close-up of piece of Garter Snake

I found this piece of garter snake on the trail.  It had been eaten up by something.

Mammalian Critters

Like I said not a great set, but pickings have been slim. That whole graduate school thing getting in the way of fun.

Woodrat using the trees branches as a highway

Bobcat butt

Bobcat Shoulder

I just cannot seem to get the bobcats to look at the camera right now.  Going to have to try a new approach.

A Cast of Critters

I did not get very many good pictures on my last set of 2011, but I am going to post a few anyways. We cannot just have a bunch of link dumps and no original content.

So I present some birds of YLR. All images have been cropped.

The Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus)
Pale eye-ring, pale chest spots on throat and smudged spots on breast

Good look at the eye-ring and pinkish legs

Brown head and back with "distinctly warm, reddish tail"

American Robin, Turdus migratorius

Another American Robin

California Quail Callipepla californica

Unidentified flying critter

===============
Cornell Ornithology Lab Links:

Hermit Thrush 
American Robin
California Quail

450+ images and all I got was this flipping bird

Title says it all, but I turned all the images into a short movie.




Sigh*

Just way too much open space for the IR sensor to wig out on.  Lesson learned. But there were a few images in there of one living chordate.







This is one of the Carpodacus finches, likely Carpodacus mexicanus, the House Finch. While a common bird this is the first time I have gotten them on camera trap and actually the first time I have "seen" them at Younger Lagoon at all.




Thanks to local birding legend Steve Gerow for the ID help. I was not sure if it was a House Finch or a Purple Finch and really how to tell the difference between the two. Steve wrote:

"but the impression I get of the general structure ... is much more like House Finches, with a smaller rounder head, short bill with just about the right curve to the culmen, etc.  Purple Finches almost always look larger headed, with a squarer or more angular head shape, and a longer bill that is not so curved.."

Conclusion: I have a lot of room for improvement in my birding skillz and my non-amphitheatre style trap set placement skillz.

Sprucing up the Midden

I stumbled across this midden a few 10s of meters from the Great Highway.  I had no idea it was there and had to tromp through some stinging nettle to get to it, but alas an easily accessible midden at Younger Lagoon.  Now it was time to get some close-ups of a Neotoma with the homebrew.







Christian and I met up a few days after I made this set and thank god for that.  As you can see something moved the camera and had it pointed all in the wrong direction. Luckily Christian and I were able to reset the camera without too many lost days and got some great Woodrat pictures.









The little one then brings in some fresh green branches to spruce up the midden being careful to place them oh so right.

Keep Cruisin'

The Great Highway is still a popular route as ever at Santa Cruz's Younger Lagoon.

Munching Raccoon

Here a raccoon has made a fast food stop to chow down on a rabbit that was found as roadkill just outside the reserve.

Flighty Deer through the Fog

Go Go Go.

08:43:06

08:44:10

Chill Bobby

The highway rest stop is used for some good rubbing time and checking out the scenery during a rain storm.

Log Jammin'

There are many ways to deal with a log in the trail. You can jam over it. You can jam under it. You can jam around it. You can even jam across it. In this set we got a few species dealing with a log in the trail in just about every way imaginable.

The bobcat goes under it. Tight fit but he just manages to squeeze through.








Don Coyote or Sancho, we still have not decided, goes over it







The raccoon family goes over it, across it and probably under it.









The woodrat just seems to hang out on the margins of it.

Look at the length of that tail!