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!

The Triumphant Return of Don Coyote

To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action when there is more reason to fear than to hope. 'Tis the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket.

I was getting worried that our old friend Don Coyote was no longer with us at Younger Lagoon.  He was in pretty bad shape with mange the last time we saw him eight months ago.




It seems, though, that he has returned.  Maybe he never went that far and we just kept missing him or maybe he has returned to the lagoon after a foray out of La Mancha. Or maybe this is his squire Sancho Panza who also suffers from the mange, but I like to think it is our old friend Don.





 

Is Don recovering from the mange and growing some of his tail hair back?  This coyote looks a little smaller and younger than the Don we saw months ago. However it is too hard to tell with certainty whether or not it is the same individual with such a gap in the time between sightings.

What do you think?  Is this old Don or is it Sancho?  All our old pictures of Don Coyote for comparison.  Either way he moves along, showing his tail for only a single visit in the two week set.

Stay tuned for a few more photos from this set.

The Life & Times of Don Coyote (an excerpt)

One of the recurring characters at Younger Lagoon Reserve is a character dubbed “Don Coyote” by Jake. This coyote is easily recognized with his ragged, mangy appearance, especially on the tail.

Don made an appearance in the Bushnell marsh set 005. The results from that set were promising, so we didn’t want to leave the marsh. Bobcat prints o’plenty were seen about 50 feet from set 005, thus a decision was made to move the cam to this area. It was placed in a tree looking down at an angle at the print-laden path.

Two days in Don gave his greetings, stopping at a fallen branch doused in Fox Frenzy.

Showing his biting tendencies

Leaving his mark

Bobcat visit

Don visiting his work the next day

Later, two bobcats came to play

About two weeks later, Don inspects the play area

and again left his mark

What lies in the future for the remarkable Don Coyote? I am guessing biting and peeing, but perhaps this canine will entertain us with even greater wonders!

Bonus goodness: Upon leaving, we observed a Bobcat cruising through the mustard fields outside the reserve!

Bite It

The forces of Camera Trapping Campus met up in late December, this time down south at Younger Lagoon. I was to set up a Bushnell Trophy cam, joining Jake's cam on the High Plateau.

The location of this set was a marshy area that was loaded with prints of raccoon, bobcat and deer.

One month later, a camera check. Upon entrance to the reserve, we were greeted by a fine CALIFORNIA THRASHER. We took this as a good omen.

Toxostoma redivivum

The camera appeared quite abused -- muddy from the winter storms and without the plastic covering for the IR flash. A quick search turned up the missing piece and its own damage.



The excitement was soaring, the files could not download fast enough!

Initial photos were full of raccoons and ghostly B/W blank shots.

146 photos in, it appeared.

the best shot of the culprit

What could have caused the coyote to maul the camera? Certainly not the flash, for that is infrared. Perhaps the overwhelming stimuli caused by a scent?

Later, our mangy friend stopped by for a noble portrait. Or was it his mugshot?

A Haggard Coyote

In 14 days at the same set where I got the bobcats there were three coyote visits.  In all three cases the coyote stood at the top of the bank and did not go up or down the trail that the bobcats were using.  This lead to less than optimal framing of the coyote which I had to live with as my primary goal was getting good images of the bobcats.  However all coyotes were looking straight at the camera so something about it caught their attention.

For some reason this coyote just makes me laugh.

Christian and I went to go move the camera to another set and not 3 minutes after we left the camera this slightly mangy coyote came wandering by the old set.

It stood there and watched us for a minutes or two then trotted off.  You can see it is having some mange issues especially in the tail.  I think this is the same coyote we camera trapped on the 5th of December.

I had gone by the camera and set it to video for a couple of days just to give that feature a try. I will post more on this at some point but the video seemed to have a much slower trigger speed than still images so we only got a coyote in this video for the first second or two, but it looks to be the same coyote as the one above.

Later we had an encounter with a smaller looking coyote in the same area as we saw the one above, but did not get pictures of it.