Skunk Butt

I forgot to post the only skunk photo we have gotten so far in Santa Cruz before I moved on to SET004 with the bush bunny post.  Not really the best glamor shot ... or a definite glamor shot depending on your point of view.

So here is a sexy Mephitis mephitis butt from SET003.

FYI ... Most Santa Cruz posts are tagged with the set number (ie. SET003) in case you are interested in all posts from a particular set.

Some Birds

The Bobcat slope made a fine feeding ground for some wintering and resident birds.

Spotted Towhee, Pipilo maculatus

The Spotted Towhee was a first for me in this area.

California Towhee, Melozone crissalis are everywhere.

California Towhee, Melozone crissalis

California Thrasher, Toxostoma redivivum:

California Thrasher, Toxostoma redivivum

Golden-crowned Sparrows, Zonotrichia atricapilla, were the most frequent visitors:

Golden-crowned Sparrows, Zonotrichia atricapilla

Golden-crowned Sparrows, Zonotrichia atricapilla

Tusen Takk to Steve Gerow (second from top at link) of the Monterey Bay Bird Club for help in identifying the sparrows.

Bobcats Week 2

I previously posted some bobcats from the first week of a set in Santa Cruz County, CA.

The set was up for a total of 15 days and bobcats showed up during the second week too.

In two weeks we had 12 visits with 13 bobcats total.  One visit had two bobcats in the same visit.  In the 12 visits there are at least two individuals, but likely three.  I don't think there was any more than three bobcats captured at this set.  The time between visits ranged from 1.5 hours to 100 hours with a mean species visit interval of 33 hours.  I define a visit as >1 hour between images of the same species.  Visits were split roughly evenly between day and IR images.  This was a well lit set so IR correlated well with the sun being below the horizon.  Below is a graph of the visits binned into hour intervals for bobcats and coyotes for this set, with yellow being daylight hours and gray being night hours. Clicking on the graph will enlarge it.

Some data of interest for this set is as follows:

 

Data of Interest
# of pics	68
# not "test" pic	52
# of ID species	9
# of CT days	15
# of visits	26
# of misfires	5
# of test shots	16
# of triggers	52
Pos triggers	47
Pos trig %	90.4
Neg Trig %	9.6
visits/CT day	1.73
trigger/CT day	3.5
Pos trigger/day	3.1
IR images	24
Color Images	28
# of indiv	36
# of birds	15
# of mammals	32
# or small mammals	0
# of med mammals	31
# of lrg mammals	1

The number of birds, small mammals etc are the number of images not visits.  I still have to work out the complicated excel equation to get more precise visit data grouped by type of animal. Complicating the equation is if there is more than one animal in a visit, for example gangs of raccoons.  In that case, I think the total would be more informative as four "individual raccoons" rather than one "raccoon visit," but hopefully I will have that worked out shortly.

I did not ID all birds in this set hence the number of ID species being lower than it could be.  I will discuss the birds of this set once I finish IDing some of the Little Brown Birds.  With almost 2 visits a day and a positive trigger percentage over 90% I was quite please with this set despite the very heavy rain that occurred throughout most of it.  Bobcats were the most frequent visitors, followed by birds in general and then raccoons and coyotes.

The non-bird species list at this set was Bobcat, Coyote, Raccoon, BT deer and Striped Skunk.

The IR flash seems to be worse and blowout even more in wet conditions so this first photo is even worse than normal but shows two bobcats.  The previous photo in the series had the bobcat at the top of the slope in a crouched laying down position while the second one was just coming into frame at the bottom of the slope as if waiting in ambush.  I like to think it was the youngster getting ready to play attack mom.  I am going to have to do like the Codger and try and dim my IR flash a bit.  Maybe RandomTruth's upcoming post may have some more ideas on doing this.

Ambush Averted

Going on an afternoon hike

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.

Bobcats Week 1

When I saw the two bobcats while checking cams a couple of weeks back I wrote that it may have been a pair, but after seeing some new camera trap images and a comment by Aviva R. I am now leaning towards mother with a kitten from last year. Bobkittens (cubs?) may stay with their mother right up until the time that she is going to birth a new litter.

Do you guys have any thoughts on the pair vs. mom/kitten?

Here are two successive shots of two different bobcats the night I placed the camera.  You can tell they are different cats by their ear shapes and overall body sizes.  The little one lead the way.

Last years kitten?

Mom?

The IR flash is harsh, so I was hoping I got some day time photos of them too and was in luck when one of them walked by the camera again the next morning coming from the same direction that they did the previous night.

Four days later a bobcat made three separate appearances.  Once at 11:48, again at 16:34 and a third time at 18:03.  I am not sure if all images were of the came bobcat or whether they were multiple cats.  I had my camera set to take pictures every 30 seconds so it is conceivable that both cats were together and I just missed the second animal.  If the second animal passed the camera under 30 seconds after the first, no image would have been taken.  I adjusted the camera to take pictures more often in the future.

Sniff sniff

Stay tuned for more bobcats from week 2 at this set.