January 23rd and 29th 2012

Another week of mild temperatures and rains wiped out the snow that fell last weekend, with barely a trace of it left. Only one picture and accompanying video from the scouting camera, deer of course. The video is a good one as the deer chews on a branch while standing directly in front of the camera:

a little blurry

Plenty of other evidence of deer as well. It's becoming clear to me the degree to which they own the place. 

 scat piles with hoof print next to the sharpie marker

this is the site of one of the deer beds from last week, tough to tell from this pic but the leaves and needles do look a bit compressed still.

I also found what looks like it could be a buck scrape, right on the main walking trail. Seems far too late in the season for this, and there was no overhanging broken branches nearby, but who knows:

about 3 feet or so above the ground

This isn't the first time I've come across something that looks like a scrape right on the trail. Speaking of trails, here's another deer trail I followed up the rise:

Took some non-deer related pictures as well:

 not sure what left this but it doesn't look to be from a raccoon

 fallen nest

 skunk cabbage

 Standing water in late January in a shady spot. Sums up this winter, or lack thereof.

new camera site with woodchips scattered nearby

As the picture above shows, the camera is in a slightly different spot. Facing east again. I came across wood chips scattered near the base of this tree, no idea how they got there. Hoping to find out. 

No ticks again, I was worried they might return with the snow melting away. YTD total remains 19. 

January 22nd 2012 - SNOW

At long last, good snow for tracks. Over the past week there was first another snow into rain event Tuesday, with temps so warm by the end of the day that what snow there was turned into fog. Then a few dry cold days before an accumulating snowfall with subfreezing temps all day for Saturday. I visited the following morning. As I write this the temperature is heading back up again with rain in the forecast so most of what's seen below will be wiped out in all likelihood.

As I had feared, the batteries in the scout camera were tapped out and this meant whatever was on the memory card was lost. I should have replaced them on my last visit, but didn't have batteries with me at the time. Replaced the batteries and moved the camera about 20 feet from where I had it set up, now facing north instead of east. Part of my motivation was to get the camera facing more open terrain, and partly because there were fisher tracks on either side of where the camera had been located but not close enough to trigger it. The new location is closer to one of these sets of tracks, we'll see if the fisher returns to the same area.

Before even entering the woods the deer tracks were hard to miss:

These were on the edge of the parking lot

As expected, the woods were crisscrossed with deer tracks, although they were more random and spread out than I thought. One set had a hiker's footprints running alongside, as well as pawprints of the dog that was with the person checking out the deer tracks:

 deer in the middle, human on the left

x marks the Spot (or Fido)

I figured there would be impressions from where the deer had slept, i.e. deer beds. I found eight in total, five of them clustered together. All but one were in the low flat swampy area, relatively exposed compared to some of their other options nearby which was surprising. Since the snow is only a day old, I have to assume there are at least eight deer who slept here last night. 

 head at the bottom, urine stain in upper right

 note where rear legs made their impression, lower left

I also saw some tracks that I think are fisher, identified more by gait pattern than by any fine details of footprint, which were difficult to discern anyway:

EDIT: Dan Foster saw these and thinks they were left by something else, prints too small for a fisher. Perhaps a fox on the run. 

 camera is now set up near here

Finally, this mouse's track followed a meandering path and could be followed for a surprising length before disappearing under a tree trunk. Near-perfect snow conditions for capturing its tracks:

No ticks to speak of, one would hope they're hibernating under the snow pack. YTD total remains 19. 

January 9th, 11th and 12th 2012

I visited the woods yesterday morning, after the coldest night of the season so far. In hindsight, I should have waited until later in the day when it warmed up to near freezing. As it was, it was too cold and I was too underdressed to want to hang around very long. On top of that, once I had removed my gloves to retrieve the memory card from the scouting camera, frigid fingers set in rapidly and I had no desire to take the gloves off again for any reason. So no pictures from the point-and-shoot this time even though I had it in my pocket. I did see fresh (since last visit) raccoon tracks in the frozen mud along the stream, and the skunk cabbage has sprouted to a few inches high.

In the past week, conditions continued mild and snow-free until Thursday 1/12, when a storm passed through with the first accumulating snow of the year. However it quickly changed over to pouring rain through midafternoon. Then the deep freeze for the weekend. End result, no snow for tracks and ground frozen solid to boot.

The scouting camera yielded a few pictures, all of them deer:

Given the proximity of the camera site to a well-worn deer trail I should have known they'd hog the spotlight. Still, with all the raccoon scat and sunflower seed piles I thought I might get some other critters as well. Still a promising site, although the camera needs to be repositioned so that the tree doesn't take up half the frame. Battery level also getting low, reading at 58%. I'm not sure if the low temperature affected the status of this reading though.

While I was checking the camera a few people passed through on the main path making quite a racket. Right after they went by a deer ran through, from the eastern edge staying near the stream. I think it sensed both me and the other visitors.

No deer ticks this time, a big change from a week ago and I did check thoroughly. Maybe they're torpid at temps below 20 degrees, one can hope. YTD total stays at 19.

January 5th and 8th 2012

Spent an hour in the woods this morning. Still snow-free of course. Since the last visit there's been a cold snap followed by a warming trend. Overall conditions on the ground are much more favorable for finding scat than tracks, and the point-and-shoot pics bear that out. I also moved the scouting camera, more on that below. First, checked the camera in its spot alongside the stream. Four shots, all in the pre-dawn hours Thursday morning:

raccoon walking along the log

pair of deer walking through - note the erupting antlers on one of them

Spent much of the time checking out the eastern edge of the SVT property. Probably off the reservation at times as well. My primary interest was in checking out a cluster of pine trees that had been used as toilets which I had noticed earlier in the fall. On my way there though came across two scat samples, both of them deer I think but one of them doesn't look like any deer scat I've ever seen:

Amongst the pine trees were the scats that I had noticed a couple months back. Not sure what left them but the placement's no accident. Also at the base of a couple of trees are healthy sized piles of sunflower seed shells. Probably from a squirrel, and most definitely taken from a birdfeeder in one of the nearby backyards on Clark Road:

these two piles have been there for a couple of months at least

this one has been around even longer in all likelihood

piece of a feather and seeds in this pile

sunflower seed shell middens - new since November

two fresher scat piles (raccoon), each with lots of seeds throughout. 

The fresher scats (last two pics) and the one with the feather in it are almost certainly from a raccoon; not so sure about the other older scats though. I had been thinking about putting the camera in this area when I first came across the numerous scat piles in November, but even then those piles were old and dried up, so not sure how frequently whatever had left them was passing through. However, the fresher raccoon scats made it a no-brainer to move the camera. This will be the view of the scouting camera for the next few weeks:

That's one of the raccoon scats at the base of the tree, with an older pile on the other side of the tree. There's a sunflower seed midden on the other side as well. We'll see what if anything the camera picks up here. I'm guessing raccoons and squirrels, hopefully some of the animals that hunt them as well. 

Finally, big day for deer ticks as I found a total of 18 crawling on me, mostly females including one that had attached itself to my neck. Definitely a drawback to this camera site in that getting there requires passing through prime tick habitat. Did I mention the stand of trees is right next to a well-worn deer trail? YTD total for ticks is 19. 

January 1st 2012

Visited the woods today around 11 AM and found the camera had no pictures on it from the past week, almost certainly because the batteries were getting too low. Thought I could get another week out of them but apparently not. New batteries installed. I did however bring my point-and-shoot with me for the first time in months, with the express purpose of getting shots for this blog. As you'll see, the vast majority of the point and shoot pictures will be either tracks or scat. Much more heavily weighted toward scat this time though.

Along the stream near the bridge were some fresh raccoon tracks:

On the bridge itself, some rather degraded scat that I had first noticed a couple of weeks back. Mostly fur but with some seeds and berry skin in there as well:

Further down along the planks were some similar samples but with what appear to be pieces of claw or toenail in them. Hopefully not all that's left of someone's cat:

claw pieces are near the pen cap

 Not far away, just off the planks was what appeared at first blush to be a garden-variety piece of dog poop, but the color and content (mostly fur from the looks of it) makes me wonder:

Any scat experts out there who might have an idea of what left any of these, please let me know in the comments. The next sample I need no help in identifying:

Relatively fresh deer scat

deer trail where I found the scat

Near the scouting camera along the stream was some well-developed kammeis, just like last week:

While tromping around I noticed a pair of deer about 100m away, which I spooked. As they moved away along the edge of the nearest abutter's back yard, I was able to get a shot of a buck, albeit a poor one given the limitations of my camera.

The subject is just about dead center in the frame, believe it or not. Here's the close-up:

The only non-scouting camera shot of a deer I've gotten, which explains why I'm including such a crappy picture.

Finally, in the deer tick count, I found a single adult female crawling on my leg after a fair amount of off-trail walking. Which makes me think I might have missed a few. Unable to locate any others though, so the 2012 count stands at one.

Next post in a week or two.