9/20-23 2012

The site near the spring has yielded results after just a week. Quite gratifying as I was starting to wonder if I was going to get anything larger than a squirrel captured on camera. Most exciting was this shot:

Walking out of the frame to the left is what I'm fairly certain is a coyote. If so it would be the first one I've caught on film here. I haven't seen any obvious tracks that would be indicative of a coyote's presence but they're of course becoming more common in the area. Brues woods would seem like a good area for them to frequent as well, at least as a corridor for getting from here to there. I also wonder if the skunk cabbage berry-laden scat I found at the base of the tree last week came from a coyote.

Also making appearances were far more familiar denizens of the woods:

No ticks that I could find after what was admittedly a brief visit. The current camera placement is convenient in that respect, no tromping through mats of ferns and multiflora rose to get to it.

July through 9/16, 2012

...Aaaand we're back. The buzzard's luck continues with the camera though. The camera's batteries ran out again due to my not visiting it frequently enough. Motivation to go back there in the height of summer not the greatest what with the swarms of mosquitoes and of course deer ticks, although I emerged from my most recent visit without any of them on me. Whatever the case, pickings have been slim, with these two representing the highlights of the past couple of months:

Date and time are off because I forgot to reset them after replacing dead batteries. After tromping around considering my options for where to place the camera, I finally settled upon a streamside location near a small spring, up against the hillside that leads to the school. It's also relatively close to the small footbridge crossing the stream but I'll take my chances. Camera is too high to pick up the raccoons walking in the streambed, but there have been visitors to the bank next to the stream as well, as evidenced by the following scat in the nook at the base of a tree:

skunk cabbage "berries" from scat

this could be from a raccoon I suppose, although the shape isn't indicative of that. Whatever left it was eating (if not digesting) the fruit of the skunk cabbage, examples of which can be found all over the swampy low-lying areas of the area:

 fruit pod opened by me with berries scattered

Those berries couldn't have been a very good meal.