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.