JENGA

The scene when I went to check the camera

Rewind two weeks. The previous days of summer had seen camera trap sets that produced stirring images of blades of grass and posing hikers, but no critters.

I had been walking back from another epic failure when I noticed  an IMMENSE  pile of scat in the middle of the fire road/trail. Now this was a truly epic shitpile. Upon closer examination it appeared that each layer was from a different animal, and they delicately left their mark in a version of the classic game, Jenga.

I tucked the location away in the old memory (as well as GPS) and returned a week later with full supplies.

The Jenga game was still on as I searched the area around the trail. To one side was a gap among the bay trees, with a game trail shrouded in poison oak. I leapt down and discovered that the brush quickly cleared and a wide avenue lay before.

I ran from possible set location to set location like an uncaged border collie, finally settling on side view of the avenue, where it forked into a seasonal creek.

Two weeks later, we had a loser in the Jenga game and a few sweet images to get off the summer snide.

 

More to come from the exciting location...

Water Runs Dry

No, I'm not talking about Boyz II Men ballads (though feel free to go on an early 90s junior high dance jamz youtube spiral with that link).

The focus here instead will be on Marble Hot Springs, a gem of a birding spot in the Sierra Valley. Apparently there used to be a hot springs resort here, but it is long gone and now the area is only visited by some cool birds, unfenced cattle and on the roads, the occasional birders and local tweakers.



For CTC it has become tradition that with each journey to the High Country for the Codger's workshop, a pilgrimage is made to observe the great bounty of birdlife at Marble Hot Springs.

Previous years' visits have yielded many a life bird and those birds being present in high numbers.

White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi)

Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis)

Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus)

shy Willet (Catoptrophorus semipalmatus)

Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica, with something in his beak 

Cliff Swallow, Petrochelidon pyrrhonota, in Nest.

This summer, when my companions came up a month early in June to pre-set cams for the workshop, they viewed nearly a hundred Ibis, a score of Sandhill Cranes, Horned Larks and insanely, a Little Blue Heron! A true winged treat for us Yay Area-ers.


The July visit was a whole 'nother tale. Nearly the entire Marble Springs area was dried up, with large swaths of land looking like

bonus Valley Gartersnake (Thamnophis sirtalis fitchi)

Cattle ran, well ok, stood and ate and shat, all over the damn place. Water only existed in irrigation ditches and small pools.

However, amid this dryness a few treasures were awaiting us:

American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus). Shake it but don't break it.

gulping down a bullfrog!

Wilson's Snipe (Gallinago delicata)

Random Truth splendidly covered the time we got to spend with these two. Check it out.

Finally, we were able to add two new lifers to the list: Virginia Rails and Soras, both of which had youngin's with them.

Herps of the Mojave: Redondo Dos

First one more snake. A speckled rattlesnake, Crotalus mitchelli. I didn't get a single half decent image of it but Christian did. A couple of pictures when it was on the hook. This was a lifer for both of us and was actually one of the species on my 2012 Wish List.




A commenter on Flickr, who has a lot of great herp and desert shots himself, suggested that we should be careful with gravid females, which I totally agree with. This might have been a gravid female, but I am not sure. It certainly looks plump in the mid-section in this image, but we did not handle it enough to determine sex, let alone whether it was gravid. When we were looking at the snake in live time, I don't remember thinking it was gravid, but it is certainly possible we over-looked this in our excitement, and now I am starting to convince myself that this is sounding a little familiar. However, we simply moved it to a safer spot where it quickly disappeared into the rocks. What do you guys think in regards to it being gravid?

Another King of the Rocks, who will also disappear into the cracks when you try and sneak up on him. Otherwise he is macho and likes to do push-ups for all of the other chucks to see. Look at those biceps.




And a few pictures of a juvenile chuckwalla, the guy above was not the dad though, their ranges are not that large. The baby was found several miles down the road. My first baby Chuck.






Finally, the only desert tortoise of the trip, but this was the third year in a row we have seen one of these majestic critters. There really is no better way to start your day than stumbling upon a desert tortoise in the early morning light. This one was crossing an old dirt road.










She didn't need any help across the road. Made it across just fine herself, thank you very much.





We did pull the cholla needle out of her eye for her though.

Photo Credits: First 5 photos and last 2 by Christian. Remaining by JK.
As always, but it bears repeating, no animals were collected on our trip.

Herps of the Mojave

All of these Mojave Desert posts and I have been holding back the herp pictures from you. Here I present to you the herps without legs.

Wait a Mojave post that actually has Herps in it! I know shocking.

The herping on this year's desert trip was very different than 2011. I got two life species, and one hombre that has been going to the Mojave for 25 years got a lifer for this part of California. That being said we saw much fewer reptiles in both numbers and species than we did in 2011. There were probably two main factors (1) Less rain = less plant seeds = less rodent food = less snake food and (2) It got cold quick. The road was under 80°F a mere hour after sunset.

The first night of driving we split into two cars and one car saw four sidewinders, all babies and the other car spotted one sidewinder, again a baby, at the meet-up point so car 1 got their fifth snake of the night.







When we got back to camp we found another group of campers had parked right next to us and set-up their tents within 100 feet of ours.  WTF. 1.6 million acres to chose and you set-up right next to another group. It would have been a total bummer of a night if not for late night fajitas, tequila and a good campfire. We got two visiters right before bed, one wasn't really welcome, no we don't want to share our campfire with you, but the other was most welcome. Ben happened to find our second visiter on his way back from peeing on some rocks.

Believe it or not this is a lifer for me. I have seen plenty in captivity but my first wild Rosy Boa. In a locale that I wasn't really convinced they even existid in to boot.

She, yes she, no spurs, was not very cooperative when it came to photography though. She really wouldn't sit still so these are not the best or photographs.










The following night we saw but a single snake on the road. Again a species we had already seen, but this time an adult.








And one shot of some herpers on the ridge in the middle of the day falsely thinking they can turn up something other than a whiptail




Some herps with legs next week.

Howl Hill

Howl Hill.
Where one lets the landscape echo the primal yelp that resides within us all...

And a decent place to set a camera trap

We ascended through a patch of Doug Fir to a relatively barren, stony hilltop. The homebrew cam was locked around one particularly large boulder alongside a deer trail.
Pointing east.
I figured that this was the kids' set, so it was important to see why aiming in that direction was potentially (likely) a bad idea and I let it be.

The first results:

Fence Lizard heats up

LLAMA ATTACK*

Retrieving our first round of shots, we then reviewed the photos as a class. Were there any problems? Several students quickly pointed out the rock was in the shot and the object of focus by the camera. One student mentioned that the image was a bit bright, but others thought that it was not a big problem. We agreed to adjust the camera so that the rock was out of the shot. 

VELVETY!

1st turkey on camera trap. Worth something, I guess

Again, we reviewed the shots in the classroom and the question was presented: were there any problems with our set? A few more spoke up about the sun, which pleased me.

School was winding down at this point and for the next round, I was going to go out by myself. I switched out the homebrew for a new Bushie w/audio and flipped it 180 degrees.

My goodness.

Ten days later on the trap, we finally got a feline.

Not the Puma variety, but still very cool.
I'll be continuing to manage some cameras with Felidae over the summer and then when September comes around, the students of my new 8th grade classroom will be reintroduced to the wild...


*not a llama, obviously. durr