May 9-23, 2012

Two visits over the past three weeks or so, with little to show for it from the camera trap. Still set up by the stream, with ferns and skunk cabbage rising rapidly. A few exposures in the first two weeks of the month, most of them false triggers it would seem except for this:

A few point-and-shoot pics worth posting though:

 fiddleheads coming up

 scat, almost certainly from a fisher

disaggregated scat, mostly fur

Returned just under two weeks later to find the batteries on the camera to be depleted, with the memory card empty as a result. I should have known better and changed them earlier. Swapped the batteries out and moved the camera back to the top of the blowdown, mostly because the vegetation looks to be capable of obstructing the camera when placed below knee height. The big surprise of the visit was finding lady slippers along the path near the school entrance. I thought the deer would have devoured any of these that sprouted up:

On the tick front, only two ticks on the most recent visit but a whopping 23 on the visit earlier in the month. YTD total into triple digits at 103.

April 12 - May 1

Two separate visits, two sites, but not much to report alas. After leaving the camera on the blowdown for just under two weeks, thinking it might catch some fisher pics, I returned a week ago to find nothing except for one picture of a squirrel which I didn't bother uploading. At that point, I moved the camera back to the old standby site by the stream. Went back to check yesterday and found nothing on the camera at all, despite abundant tracks nearby in the mud. A big rainy day last week left good conditions for tracks in the streambed after the waters receded a bit. Used my keys for scale as I forgot to bring the marker:

 dog prints

squirrel below the keys, raccoon above 

raccoon rear foot, I think

Certainly the camera still works fine, as it takes a picture of me when I stop by to check. Battery level still fine as well. I left it by the stream and lowered it slightly. My disappointment was mitigated somewhat by the discovery of a freshly dropped antler, which I saw from about 50 yards away as I walked down the trail

No gnaw marks on this one, always impressive to see in their pristine state. On the tick front, I picked up 8 when moving the camera from the blowdown to the stream last week, and 9 more today. Brings the YTD total to 78. 

On a completely unrelated note while out for a jog in the Assabet River NWR this morning I came across a scat unlike any I've seen in terms of size shape and composition. The main thing that jumped out were various porcupine quill pieces, along with teeth which I'm guessing come from the porcupine as well. If not, then from some other rodent. Also, a sticker which may have come from a banana, possibly the banana peel it was stuck to, and a chunk of hide with the fur still attached. Plenty of bones and vegetable matter too. I disaggregated it before coming back later in the day to take pictures, something I now regret:

quills and teeth above the marker

 sticker with a bit of a QR code still visible

The scat as a whole was big. I'm thinking coyote as the source after doing an online image search (always a good time looking at pictures of coyote scat).