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.

Feral Cats caught by Camera Trap

We placed our trail camera by a creek in an open space park near our house, and we were surprised when the results showed a pair of feral cats coming and going in front of the camera almost every evening.

We also got quite a few blurry pictures of the local deer, birds, and raccoon along the creek, and a couple of slightly blurry pictures of a rat or rat like creature.

I guess we shouldn't have been too surprised. The creek is probably a good home for these cats.  There is cover in the bushes, rats and birdies to eat, and water to drink.  I suppose they could get on quite well.

You will notice in one photo a strange snaky streak next to the black cat.  We are not sure what it is.  A snake ghost?  A ghost of some other animal?  Or just the blur of the reflecting eyes of another cat as it ran through the photo?

They say coyotes and mountain lions come into this neighborhood from time to time.  We have not seen them here and have not caught any on the trail cam, but we did see a dog-like foot print in some sandy soil behind our house.  If they do come around, these cats may find life here a bit less enjoyable.

Feral cats have caused tremendous harm to the native populations of birds, especially song birds, and many naturalists have sounded the alarm about them. Should we try to capture and deliver these critters to a shelter? At least if they can be neutered, they won't be contributing to the problem by producing more ferals.

A fox in our backyard

Going through the fridge last week we found a Tupperware container with the remnants of three-week-old arroz con pollo. There was one piece of chicken left, a drumstick.  It was too old to eat, of course, and we don't put meat in our compost bin. But just tossing it seemed wrong. Repurpose! We got a bright idea: let's put it in front of the trail cam and see who comes to dinner!

We have been moving the trail camera to different locations in the hills here and have not gotten a lot of postable pictures.  We did see a few house cats or feral cats by a creek nearby (perhaps I'll post those later), and a bunch of blurry deer pictures.  We moved the camera into our back yard and put the drumstick a few yards in front of it.   A day later, the morsel was still there in front of the camera, but a couple of days after that it was gone.  We went to get the card out of the camera and 'OH NO' the batteries in the camera had died and there were no photos on the card.

Not completely daunted by this, we looked in the fridge for another item a critter might enjoy, and found a half of a cantaloupe that was never very good anyway and getting kinda old. We put it in front of the camera and 2 days later, voila, several very good pictures of a fox!  And a pair of raccoons, and a young buck.  All came to investigate the melon.

I'm not sure the species of the fox, all foxes look gray in the IR light at night.

Strange though, all they did was nibble on it.  It's still there.  Maybe we will get more pictures yet. Or maybe, like us, they didn't think the melon was very tasty.

A Green Anole on Maui

After hiking around Haleakala (the tallest dormant volcano in the world, on Maui during our vacation last week, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant for lunch. They seated us right at a window with a view of a neat little rock garden just outside. And while we were eating, this guy appeared on the rocks.  He sat in the sun for awhile, then scurried to and fro, jumped from rock to rock, then lazed in the sun some more.  Every time a fly or other insect buzzed passed him, he would lift up his head and watch it closely, but we never saw him catch one.

He has a dewlap or throatfan under his chin that he would open up from time to time.  It was bright red or orange in color and would stick out from under his neck by half an inch or so.  He wouldn't do this when I had the camera on him, though. But, here is a picture of a gecko with his dewlap out.

The waitress said it was a gecko, and they like the geckos on Maui because they eat a lot of bugs.  A gecko in your house is considered a good sign.  But after researching him up on the web, I see he is not a gecko, but  a Green Anole (Anole carolinensis), a lizard that is native to the the southern United States and was introduced to Hawaii in the 1950's.  Some say they escaped from a pet store. Who could blame the critters? Life in a Maui rock garden beats a box in a pet store.

Back from Hawaii

Maui Grey Francolin

In late July, we took a vacation on the island of Maui in Hawaii, and while we were there we kept an eye out for the local critters. We saw many, although few are native to the islands. Birds, lizards, goats and mongeese, to name a few.  Here is the noisiest of them, the grey francolin (Francolinus pondicerianus).

Frankolin Hen and Chicks, Top View

We noticed these birds soon after we arrived. It would be hard not to. They are one of the largest birds in the area,  and did not seem to mind humans coming within a few feet of them.   We were marveling at these birds in a Kihei park when an apparently inebriated local gave us a 5 minute dissertation on how noisy they are.  When we asked what they are called, he struggled to remember, but could not think of it.  But as he walked away, he yelled back,  "Oh yeah, I remember, they are 'Franklins'".

Francolin Chicks Learning to Squawk

The francolins were brought to Hawaii from India in the late 1950's to establish a flock of game birds.  They have flourished on the islands.  It appears they have no local predators, but if they continue to squawk at the top of their lungs at sunrise, just outside of the hotel rooms and condominiums of late sleeping vacationers, this might change!  Just as the sun comes up these guys can make one heck of a racket.  And there were several flocks of them scurrying around the gardens, lawns and open spaces near our hotel.  We saw a couple of litters of young as well.

They look a bit like partridge or quail, and are about the same size. If you plan to visit Maui, and like to get up with the sun, just leave your windows open and you'll have an authentic Maui alarm clock awakening.

Bucky is Back!

Last week, we lamented  that we had not seen any of the local black tail deer bucks lately, and our trail camera trap has not caught any either.  We have been seeing a couple of does wandering around the neighborhood, one with a couple of fawns in tow.  Then the other day when we were out for a walk we saw 2 bucks in a local school yard, but alas, I did have my camera.

Then last night while cooking dinner, we looked out our kitchen window and there, just 15 feet from our house, was a buck.  He was looking for a way to get into our garden and munch on all those delicacies--day lilies, a lemon tree, succulents.  Fortunately, our six-foot-tall deer proof fence proved to be just that, and he gave up, munched on some greens outside of the fence, then curled up and mulled it over for awhile before sauntering away.

His antlers are quite large now, but they still have the velvet on them, so it looks like they may still be growing.  I hope we get a shot of the velvet coming off when that happens.

For more of our pictures of deer, click on "Deer" in labels section at the bottom of this page.

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 ?