Backyard Critter Watch is back after a too-long hiatus during which jobs, home, family and life took over and kept us away! But back in time to capture the best of spring time when the critters are out and about and multiplying!

In early May, we placed our trail camera aimed at a small creek near our house to see what stops for a drink. This time we got very lucky when a doe and a newborn fawn stepped in front of the camera.  The fawn is probably only a day or two old in this first video. Look at those legs, still very wobbly. 

In this second video the fawn is only a month old, and already it can run and jump as well as any grown up. Keep watching after the doe leaves the frame. The fawn comes through a few moments later.

Camera Trap Captures These Critters

We have been moving around the trail camera to different locations in the open space parks in the hills of the east bay near Berkeley and El Cerrito, CA, and the results have been very satisfying. We've set up the camera near obvious game trails to spy on the comings and goings of our animal neighbors, often near streams that would be an attraction for thirsty critters.

This camera has proved to be a lot fun and worth the investment. Posted here are a few of the more appealing and intriguing pictures, and again, they are mostly of deer. While many are clear shots, others are more mysterious, leaving us to wonder the real identities of the flash of fur before the lens.

Click on 'Trail Camera' in the section titled 'Labels' at the bottom of the page for more pictures from our Trail Camera.

It is interesting we have not seen any bucks lately, only doe and fawns.  We would like to see how the buck's antlers have grown lately, and if they are losing their velvet yet, but no luck on this.  It is good to see that the fawn we wrote about earlier, with the swollen nose, is better.  We think it is the same fawn as in the first picture here.  It must have been due to a bee sting.

We have gotten a few pictures of other animals, but they have been at night, taken with IR, and they have been so blurry and muddy that it is often difficult to identify the critter.  We think we got several shots of a fox at one location, and perhaps a few shots of a bobcat, but it is really hard to tell.  We got a few very  blurry pictures of a  raccoon, too. There was a mountain lion sighted in El Cerrito a few weeks ago, but we are disappointed he didn't stop and pose in front of the camera while he was in town.  One animal we can't identify is posted here.  Is it a very skinny fox?  or perhaps a weasel, or a long legged  ferret, or ?

Does this fawn look OK to you?

The Doe and Her Progeny

Sitting at my desk today I noticed one of the local black tailed does walking through my neighbor's backyard, so I grabbed my camera and went out on our back deck.  Critter Watch had begun.

The doe heard me open the door and she looked up with concern, but I hunkered down below the railing and she started grazing again on my neighbor's plants.  I was hoping they wouldn't eat much.

The fawn with the swollen muzzle

Then I noticed something in the weeds behind her, a spotted fawn!  The fawn soon came out in the open and I took a few pictures.  The doe would walk a few steps up the hill and her spotted baby was trailing close behind.  As they approached the back of my neighbor's house, I noticed a second fawn that must have been ahead the other two as they came up the hill.  I took a few more photos. Several times, the deer heard me as I maneuvered to get a better shot, and they would look up in my direction with some concern. But after a few seconds, they would get back to the task at hand, eating my neighbor's plants.

The other, normal looking fawn

It wasn't until I looked at these pictures on the computer that I noticed something wrong with one of the babies. Its muzzle is swollen on both sides, below the eyes and up to its nose. Take a look. Maybe it's due to a bee sting, or a mutation?  Last year we saw a fawn that had a huge swelling on the side of its head by the neck, like a goiter, but we didn't get a photo of it.  A friend of my dad's speculated it may have been due to a rattlesnake bite.  We never saw that fawn again, so either the swelling healed or that fawn did not make it.

I'll send these photos to the local Lindsay Wildlife Museum and Hospital and see if they have any explanations. We'll keep you posted on the fawns' progress and hope for the best for the odd one.

Another view of the swollen schnozzola

Two Spotted Fawns and a ?

The game camera, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get. Sometimes little or nothing is captured, but sometimes we reap a bonanza of great images.  Yesterday was the bonanza.

We moved the camera last week to a different critter trail, also in the open space area near our house.  The trail leads from a clearing in the brush under a large spreading oak down to a small creek.   It looked well used, but when we checked the SD card after 3 days we had no critter pictures to show for the time.  We left it there another 3 to 4 days, and look what we found!  The first photo shows a pair of spotted fawns.  Both look healthy and alert, evidence that the local herd is thriving nicely.  This is, of course, good news  for the local nature lovers, but bad news for the local gardeners.

The other photo is obviously of some sort of animal from the cat family, but we are not sure what.  The cat was moving and it is quite blurry.   Our best guess is that it is a house cat or maybe a feral cat.  There are homes a quarter mile away.  And we do see feral cats around the neighborhood from time to time.  There are wild cats in the hills nearby, both bobcats and moutain lions, but this guy is too small to be a mountain lion and has too much tail for a bobcat.

We Caught a Spotted Fawn

Look what we caught on our game camera this week.  A spotted fawn!  It passed by the camera a couple of times and we got several good shots, including that second one of the newborn gingerly stepping over a log on brand new legs. Our speculation that at least one of the local does was pregnant has been confirmed. This baby can't be much older than a week. Hopefully, we will see more than just one this spring.

Strange, we did not see its mother.  Probably the doe passed by the camera too quickly. My main complaint about this camera is that it takes several seconds after the motion sensor is triggered before it takes a picture.  Many times we see just the tail end of an animal after it has passed nearly through the frame.  Other times we get pictures of nothing but the ground and the flora, because whatever triggered the camera is long gone by the time it snaps a photo.  In fact, we get 5 or 6 pictures of nothing for every photo of an animal.  If it was quicker, we would have a lot more photos to share.  Hey, Moultrie - if you are listening, please improve this! And anyone who is buying a game camera, be sure you consider this factor.

We also got this picture of  a squirrel, a first for our game camera.  I think we will leave it in this same location for another week and see what else passes.