I (accidentally) Camera Trapped one of New York's Smallest Mammals

It has been just over a year since I blogged last (December 2 2016). It not like I haven't been writing. I just haven't been blogging. I have been writing a monthly column for the Finger Lakes Times called "Speaking of Nature". Between the articles and Facebook posts, my itch to write has been scratched.
But I just retrieved a camera that I had deployed for a year and thought i would share the results here.
My first camera traps were all Cudeebacks and although I loved the fast trigger speeds and their ease of use, they just don't live very long. They become unreliable quickly and I don't use them for class projects. But my Dad and I set one last year with the intention of letting it just soak for months.

Dad and I set a camera trap in December 2016
Fremont, NY

To tell you the truth, I forgot about it. In fact, I had walked within 10 yards of it several times and didn't even notice it. Partly because I wasn't looking for it but partly because it had fallen off the tree...

Last image from an upright camera
Fremont. NY

The strap came loose. There is no evidence an animal did it. But I will never know. By March 30th, here was the angle of the camera:

Red Squirrel
Fremont, NY

And then the strap came completely undone and the camera came to rest on its side,

The original view

Same photo, cropped and rotated

Commercially available camera traps are not designed to capture small animals. Someone can have one especially made or home brew one themselves. So I rarely get shrew photos. And by rarely, I mean three times before. This shrew capture is by far the best. And it is of a shrew i never see in the wild.

Here is a mouse for comparison:

Deermouse
Fremont, NY

And here is the shrew:

Shrew, possibly Masked Shrew
Fremont, NY

I cannot tell the species from this photo. I suspect it is a Masked Shrew but it could be a Pygmy or a larger Smoky. We are talking about an animal that weighs between 2 and 6 grams. It takes 28 grams just to get to an ounce. This animal weighs as much as a few paper clips. They are so light that they do not trigger the live traps I use when capturing small mammals for class. i will probably never photograph this species again unless it is in the hand or I am using a special camera.

The Camera Trap Tells the Story

One of my favorite parts of camera trapping is when the photos tell a story. I don't mean a single image that one can interpret, I mean a series of images that tell a tale from beginning to end. Today I pulled three SD cards and found such a series.

Chapter 1: The Coyote. I made this particular set over six weeks ago and in that time coyotes have shown up frequently. Other predators captured include red and gray fox and a neighbor's cat. But this particular coyote looks large and majestic.

Coyote's first appearance of the night

Coyote heads north, away from the camera

Chapter 2: Eastern Cottontail. About an hour later I captured this Eastern Cottontail. Rabbit captures have been common at this set, complimented by gray squirrel captures during the daylight.

Eastern Cottontail about an hour after the Coyote left

Chapter 3: The eyes have it. Look in the distance, in the direction the coyote was last heading. See the eye shine? Could it be the coyote?

Eastern Cottontail with a coyote in the distance

Here is the same photo cropped! I think that IS the coyote.

Eastern Cottontail with coyote eye shine in the background

Chapter 4: The End. A good story can still hold its own even when the action takes place off screen. Here we see that those were indeed the coyote's eyes in the distance. This particular rabbit met its end on this warmer than average morning. I kept the set active. Perhaps another story will emerge. Perhaps in that next story the rabbit will get away...

Coyote captures eastern cottontail

A Tale of Three Cameras

"Button Buck" captured on camera trap
(Muller Field Station, 5/15)

I set three Reconyx cameras at our Muller Field Station in May of this year. They were retrieved about a month later. Each of the sets were located along the channel but each had very different results.  I guess this is one of the reasons I enjoy camera trapping so much. First, you never know what you are going to get and second, there is really a level of knowledge you need to tease out what is happening in the photos. Here are some of the best stories from each:





SET 1: Let's see... 145 captures X 10 photos per capture = 1,450 photos to sort through. I captured

Raccoon inspects snapping turtle
(Muller Field Station, 6/15)

six species of mammal at this location (including that handsome deer in the photo above) but my favorite story involved a reptile. In the photo to the left, you can see the top of a shell of a snapping turtle. It appears the raccoon doesn't know what to make of it. I wish the camera was set a bit lower to capture the whole image, but we will have to make due.

The next day, the turtle was in the exact same place (making me pretty sure it was a female laying eggs) and two river otters found her. In this photo, the one of the river otters actually puts it front paws on the carapace.

River otter and snapping turtle
(Muller Field Station, 6/15)

SET 2: The otters visited this site as well. With no turtles to play with, they had to occupy their time in other ways. They visited a total of five times in the month but never stayed for more than a few minutes.

Daytime capture of river otter
(Muller Field Station, 5/15)

River otters mating?
(Muller Field Station, 6/15)

Alright, let's talk about that last photo. Although the otters are in the mating position, I am not certain that they are actually copulating here. This could just be play. What I am certain of is that the encounter was brief.
Otters weren't the only story here. Canada Geese came on many nights to loaf in front of the camera.

Banded Canada Goose and goslings
(Muller Field Station, 5/15)

That means lots of photos. I assumed that it was the same group of birds each night but when I looked closer, I noticed that on a few occasions, a banded adult showed up while on other nights, the adults were all unbanded. I don't recall ever camera trapping a banded bird before.







SET 3: This was the most interesting set. Years ago a tree toppled over the channel and what was the trunk is now a horizontal trunk that is suspended over the water. I have always wanted to create a set here and finally did. One of the tree limbs, now pointing towards the sky, worked as a perfect point of attachment. I assumed I would get river otters here. I mean, it just looked like a real inviting place for otters to climb up and explore. It turns out this was the only set that did not capture otters. Instead, I captured my other favorite mammal... black bear! And it only took four hours from the time the cameras were set until the bear showed up (I understand how lucky that is! The last time I set a camera at the Muller Field Station, it took 10 weeks to capture a bear image).

Black bear
(Muller Field Station, 5/15)

Black bear showing hind paw
(Muller Field Station, 5/15)

Birds were the second story of this set.

Wood Duck drake
(Muller Field Station, 5/15)

Great Blue Heron
(Muller Field Station, 6/15)

Wood Duck hen
(Muller Field Station, 6/15)

Take a look at the photo above. The photo below was taken less than 48 hours later. The camera hasn't moved but the water level changed dramatically. Instead of ducks loafing on a dry perch in front of the camera, they are SWIMMING past it. This was not the only hard rain we had this year and I am grateful that the camera stayed above the waterline :)

Mallards
(Muller Field Station, 6/15)

Jumping mouse jumps no more...

Great Blue Heron with bullhead
(Seneca Falls, NY 5/15)

I had a few camera traps set near water recently and captured a few images of one or more Great Blue Herons catching their dinners. Most of the images were fish, bullhead specifically. But one particular series caught my attention for two reasons. First, the heron caught a mammal and secondly, the images were recorded a mere 20 minutes before I pulled the camera. It was a reminder to me that timing is everything in camera trapping. Most camera trappers mitigate that concern by keeping as many cameras out as long as possible. But there is still the question of where to put them and when to move them. It makes the camera trapping game more interesting and active.

Great Blue Heron with jumping mouse sp.
(Seneca Falls, NY 5/15)

The GBH in these photos caught a jumping mouse. There are two species of jumping mice in NY (woodland and meadow) and both have that diagnostically long tail.














Another view. Here you can see the huge hind feet jumping mice use to 'jump'.

Jumping mouse caught by Great Blue Heron
(Seneca Falls, NY 5/15)

Last photo before the mouse becomes dinner:

Great Blue Heron preying on jumping mouse
(Seneca Falls, NY 5/15)

A shot with the mouse on its way down....

And its gone.

Woodland jumping mouse with white-tipped tail
(South Bristol, NY 5/11)

I cannot quite make out which species the heron ate. The photos were taken with an infrared flash so they are not in color and the distinguishing characteristic is small: the tail tip. If it is a white-tipped tail call it a woodland. If it lacks the white, call it a meadow.

Impressive hind feet of a woodland jumping mouse
(South Bristol, NY 5/11)

Woodland jumping mouse with ear tag
(South Bristol, NY 5/11)

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Laura: "Hey, I brought some chicken home from work. It's in the van."
Me: "Excellent.", as I imagine chicken tenders or even (dare I dream?) wings. But what I find is much different. You see, my wife teaches high school seniors that plan to go into the medical profession. I have written about her program in the past as she conducts a deer heart dissection each year. On this day, the students practiced sutures by sewing up cuts made in chicken thighs. The lesson was taught by Dr. Sinclair who works in the ER at Geneva General Hospital. I carefully removed the stitches from each piece and cut the thighs into smaller portions.

Fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Since I only have one camera trap deployed at the moment, I used the chicken as bait there. Our very first capture was the fisher that only recently showed up on our property (see my previous entry). I was excited to see him back and in the day time to boot!
Fisher are members of the weasel family. They are sometimes called "fisher cats" but they are not felines at all. I think that name comes from the long cat-like tail they sport. I am fairly certain this is a male due to the size. Females are about a third smaller. Below is the same photo but cropped down to have a closer look at him:


Fisher are essentially creatures of the forest. As I mentioned in my last post, they were eliminated

Close up of fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

from our part of the state many decades ago and are only recently making a comeback. When a mammal species expands its range, it is the males that are the pioneers. That makes sense. The males are the ones that disperse farther from their birthplace Who knows how long it will take for the females to catch up with this guy? Time will tell... Most weasels have a short snout (think otter) but the fisher has a bit longer of a nose than most. Not as long as a red fox or coyote mind you, but longer than any of the other weasels we have in NY.
I put out the chicken on March 23rd in the evening. I obtained these the following morning.
Here is the best shot from an artistic perspective:

Fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

During the morning visit the fisher did not take a single piece of chicken and I do not know why. At 7:09 PM he was back and this time he grabbed some of the bait. In all, he made five visits in a few minutes, taking some chicken each time. There was not enough time for the fisher to have eaten all the pieces so he must have been caching them.

Well, I have to admit he is looking pretty catty in this photo. These are the last photos to date of the fisher. That doesn't mean he isn't still around. Fisher can range over a large area and I have hopes that this guy will be a permanent resident.
With only five pieces of chicken missing, there was still plenty left. What would be the next species captured?







Red fox. The following morning, a red fox showed up. This first photo shows a nice fox in its winter coat eyeing up the chicken.

Red fox
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

However, this next photo reveals a problem. This fox has mange. That bare spot on the tail is where the mites have burrowed into the skin. The mites cause hair loss and itching. The itching causes the fox to scratch which causes more hair loss.

Red fox with mange on tail
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

The red fox made seven trips to cache chicken. Now, these bright sunny photos notwithstanding, this was a cold morning and although I had carefully cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks, many of them froze together into a giant mass. Well, on the fox's final trip he grabbed the whole pile and dragged it away.

Red fox
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

It took less than two days for all the chicken to get grabbed up by two very different carnivores. It wasn't all eaten of course and who knows if any of it changed hands again as caches sometimes get raided by others. The evening after this photo was taken, one more carnivore was captured by the camera. Perhaps this coyote smelled the chicken because it seemed to wander in front of the camera a bit and sniff around. What started as a classroom project ended as meals for at least two predators and some great photos for the blog. :)

Coyote
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Mammal #29

I had set aside some time to blog today and was planning to whine about the snow. I had selected some rabbit and squirrel tracks to discuss, but those plans all changed once I checked my camera trap. I was going to check the camera on Friday, but got busy with other things. The story was the same on Saturday. But on today (Sunday), I had run out of excuses. You see, we had some chicken thighs I had to dispose of. They had been used as part of a lab by my wife's students. They were practicing suturing and the result for me was bait for the camera trap. I do not go out of my way to bait animals, but I was not going to let these go to waste. I cut out the sutures and chunked the meat into bite sized pieces.

Fisher tracks
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

I am sure glad I waited. It is only a short walk from the house to the camera. The fresh snow obscured all but the most recent tracks. I followed a set of red fox tracks that must have been made only hours earlier as they had no snow in them at all. I arrived at the set, changed the SD card and dropped off the chicken. I decided that I should take a different route back. Almost immediately I encountered a trail that had been snowed in by the day's precipitation. I admit that I was a bit distracted at first and wrote the trail off as fox. But fox didn't fit, This was not a side trot as I had originally thought but rather a lope.
I am reading Animal Tracking Basics by Jon Young and Tiffany Morgan. They advocate looking at a trail or track and listing your three best guesses. So I gave that a try. My first thought was striped skunk (although I knew these tracks were way too big). My second critter was raccoon because coons can leave some really odd track patterns (but I wasn't convinced of that either). My third guess was the hardest of all. I kept telling myself these couldn't possibly be fisher. I have never seen a fisher on my property or even heard of one in the township. I do not have fisher habitat.
Here is another view of those same tracks. The sun was getting low in the sky and that provided

Fisher trail in a lope
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

enough shadow to bring out the detail in these tracks. These had been protected a bit by the trees and had far less snow in them than the first ones I encountered. I bought the ruler in the photo from Sue Morse when I attended one of her tracking workshops. At that workshop, Sue described the toe pattern of a fisher as "C" shaped. I could see that clearly in three of the four tracks shown here. I was still a bit in denial that these were fisher tracks. It is interesting what the mind can do. I really wanted to turn them into something, anything that I would expect to find here in Seneca Falls. I kept telling myself they were fox or just some weird skunk tracks. But I just couldn't make anything else fit besides fisher. And in the words of Mr. Spock (who was paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes): "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.". Who am I to argue with Spock (or Holmes for that matter)? But I did. I argued. I resisted. I have one more track photo to show you, the one that convinced me I just couldn't argue anymore.

Fisher tracks
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Here is as good a fisher track as I was able to find. I found it under the spruces. I learned that from Sue Morse as well. Sue told us several times during that weekend workshop to follow a trail until you found sheltered tracks that would show the details. Fisher like other members of the weasel family have five toes on the front and rear feet. You can make out all the toes in this photo.
I was very excited to say the least. This was the 29th species of wild mammal I have documented on our property (and the title of this entry). It is now one of four that have only been documented a single time (house mouse, beaver and star-nosed mole are the others).
So if I hadn't checked my camera today, I wouldn't have found these fisher tracks as the weather in the next few days will assure that they will soon be gone. But the story is not over. I returned home and slipped the SD card into my laptop. Skunk, deer, opossum, cottontail, and a few others appeared. There was the red fox who left the trail I originally followed. But my prize was there at the end. Any doubts I had about my identification of the tracks were laid to rest by several images of a fisher. The fisher tracks near the camera were obscured by the other tracks that were present and drifting and blowing snow. But once I knew where to look, I was able to find those tracks as well. None of the photos are spectacular, but I will include them here to complete the story.

Let me share two photos to set the stage and give you some scale. First, a striped skunk. Striped skunks are variable in their pattern and this individual is particularly white. Just below that is an opossum, very obscured by the vegetation. This camera only uses infrared flash at night so none of the photos will be in color.

Both are about the size of a house cat and both are in nearly the exact spot where the fisher was captured. Here is the first photo of the fisher. You can see that he is laying down tracks as the snow is busily filling them. This animal is clearly larger than the opossum or skunk.

Fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Here is the second photo of the fisher. I include it here because it shows the tail so well.

Fisher
(Seneca Falls, NY 3/15)

Finally, the fisher walked so close to the camera that it only captured the top part of his body. I say "his" because I am pretty sure this is a male by size. Females are smaller (as is common in the weasel family).

Fisher
(Seneca Falls,NY 3/15)

What an exciting final day of spring break for me. I head back to classes tomorrow and begin the "Wildlife" section of CON 102 Introduction to Wildlife and Fish. This is a class that is required for all conservation majors at our college and the inspiration for this blog in the first place. I can't wait!