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.

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

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

making use of prehensile tail

climbing the great succulent pot

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:






Camera trapping stories to follow...

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.

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.




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


Back to the mouse


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).