Black Bears on the Primos Truth Cam!

A few weeks ago, a bear savagely tore through the fence of my friends neighbors.  The Lippincott's have an alley behind their house, and the bears apparently like to use it as a thoroughfare, so I decided to try and catch one on my Primos Truth Cam!

Here, we have Sam Lippincott posing next to the bear break-in entry point.  For reference, he's about 8.5 feet tall, which gives you a sense of how tall the bear must have been.

Another photo of the damage.  The bear was trying (and succeeded) to get to the trash cans, and had proceeded in strewing the trash all over the place!

I didn't get much, but I did get a series of five pictures of a young black bear!  Check them out, pretty exciting stuff!

The Animals of Estes and Rocky Mountain National Park

As I mentioned earlier today, my family and I stayed at Estes Park a few nights ago.  During the day, we hit up the nearby Rocky Mountain National Park.  We saw a few different animals, a few of which I unfortunately was unable to get pictures of!  Here I will tell you all about the animals that we saw there!

First off, we went over to Lake Estes.  Despite the cold and the wind, probably a hundred or so geese, ducks, crows, and ravens were all scavenging around in the shallow water and the muddy areas.  We also saw a bald eagle, but unfortunately it was too far away for us to get any pictures.  Right before that, though, we spotted a muskrat (a little, water-loving rodent) swimming through the water!  It was really super cool, as it was an incredibly powerful swimmer!  We were walking along next to it, taking a ton of pictures and videos, but the muskrat was easily keeping pace with us!  It was swimming against the current, as well as against the wind, but somehow this rat-sized creature was able to forge ahead!

The muskrat swimming!

This is how far the muskrat swam!  It was certainly more than 100 yards, all keeping up with us!  CRAZINESS!

When I ran out in front of the muskrat to get pictures of it up close, it ducked into its burrow.  We were able to pinpoint the entrance because right out in front was a whole pile of what looked like chewed off crayfish pincers! 

The pile of chewed crayfish parts outside of the muskrat burrow

Some chewed parts on top of a rock

Here is a video of the muskrat swimming:

Muskrat Swimming Against The Current

We also saw a lot of elk, as we have talked about before.  Here are some more pictures that my mother took in the morning, around the same time that my Primos Truth Cam was picking them up, too!

The elk drinking on our first morning there!

An elk drinking on the first morning

 

When we first saw the elk right next to our cabin, a male mule deer walked right next to my mother and I, no more than ten feet from us while we were next to the river!  It was really cool, but a little sad to see how comfortable these animals are around humans.  Made for a good photo op, though!

The mule deer

That's our cabin, right there!

A male elk on the first night there, around the time that we saw the mule deer from above.  It was eating from a bird feeder!

While we were on our walk around Lake Estes, we passed by a male elk with a harem of four females on the golf course.  Here are some of those pictures!

The harem of female elk off to the left, while the male is grazing on the right

The male elk

The female elk

Another shot with the female elk off to the left and the male elk off to the right

And finally, a herd of elk in Rocky Mountain National Park!

Finally, although no one but my father saw it and we got no pictures of it, while we were driving in Rocky Mountain National Park at around 4:00 or so in the afternoon/evening, we almost ran over an ermine (also known as a stoat or a short-tailed weasel)!  Apparently it was adorned in its winter fur which, much like the arctic fox, changes with the seasons to blend in with its environment!  The ermine, along with otters, badgers, other weasels, and the wolverine, is a member of the family Mustelidae, colloquially referred to as the "mustelids."  The mustelids, in turn, are members of the superfamily Musteloidea, which we have discussed in the past.  It is within this superfamily that you will find coatis, raccoons, skunks, and red pandas. 

Estes Park on Dwellable

Elk in Estes Park: Up Close and Personal With Primos!

Recently, my family and I went up to Estes Park for the night.  I set up my Primos Truth Cam at our hotel, and didn't actually get any hits that night, but we got some most excellent pictures of elk, one of those members of the family Cervidae (like deer), from the very next morning!  Here are some of the best pictures from the Primos Truth Cam!

 

 

Check out that massive rack of antlers!

 

 

That was pretty exciting!  Those elk, or wapiti (the Native American term for elk, meaning "white rump") were no more than ten feet from us on our balcony!  I can upload more pictures later, but here is one final picture of the elk that we took at our cabin thingy!

I also wanted to let ya'll know that some of our polls closed the other day!  We had four polls about different things that you all wanted to featured on the blog, and three of them closed!  Here are the three different polls, what all of the voting options were, and who won!

Poll #1:  Animal You Would Most Like To See Featured

Corythosaurus: 5 Votes
Inkayacu: 6 Votes
Pallas's Cat: 7 Votes
AND OUR WINNER IS:
Bear-Dog: 8 Votes

For those of you who aren't entirely sure what these animals are, Corythosaurus is a Hadrosaur, a type of dinosaur, and Inkayacu is a fossil penguin found in South America.  The Pallas's cat is, of course, a cat.  And the bear-dog....well, we will learn more about this dude soon enough!

Poll #2:  Baby Animal That You Would Like To Be Featured

Sitatunga: 1 Vote
Geoffroy's Cat: 3 Votes
Aardvark: 4 Votes
Gentoo Penguin: 4 Votes
Tenrec: 4 Votes
Sifaka: 4 Votes
Stingray: 5 Votes
AND OUR WINNER IS:  A THREE-WAY TIE.  We will have to have a post with three baby animals in it!
Tasmanian Devil: 6 Votes
Sand Cat: 6 Votes
Aye-Aye: 6 Votes

Breakdown of the animals whose names do not make it clear what they are: Sitatunga is an antelope, aardvark is an animal that is featured HERE, tenrec is a hedgehog-looking creature from Madagascar, and the Sifaka is a lemur from Madagascar.

Poll #3:  Extinct Animal You Would Like To Hear More About

Megalania: 3 Votes
Opabinia: 4 Votes
Dire Wolf: 4 Votes
Dwarf Malagasy Hippo: 4 Votes
Cotylorhynchus: 5 Votes
AND OUR WINNER IS:
Thylacine: 7 Votes

Megalania is a gigantic relative of the Komodo dragon, Opabinia is a little creature that we will talk about later, the dire wolf was a larger relative of the gray wolf, the dwarf Malagasy hippo was just that: a dwarf hippo that lived on Madagascar, and Cotylorhynchus is also something that we will talk about later!

I will get more polls up hopefully sometime today, but in the meantime, keep in mind that we have a fourth poll open: the "Important Scientist Whose Discoveries You Would Like To Hear More About" poll.  Choose either Robert T. Bakker, David Attenborough, Matthew Mossbrucker, or Thomas R. Holtz!  Make your voice heard!

And since today is Thanksgiving, let's all take a moment to say what we are grateful for!  I'll start: I am thankful for raccoons.  Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Allenspark on Dwellable

Eine Kleine Nachtfuchs: A Little Night Fox

So once again, Primos was successful in her endeavors last night, and we were rewarded with more than two minutes of fox footage!  I set the camera to the video setting, and it recorded the resident red fox enjoying some nibbles, a bit of bait that I had left out for it!  Don't worry, I'm not going to just start posting things at Primos every single day, but the novelty and excitement of it hasn't quite worn off yet, and hopefully it won't for awhile!  Anyways, here is the link to the video!  Enjoy!

Some Foxy Business

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A Skunky Surprise and the Mimicry of the Steller's Jay

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night on Primos we didn't get any stupid little kids trying to steal the camera, and we also unfortunately didn't get any foxes, but we did get not one, not three, but TWO visits from a skunk last night!  I have absolutely no idea if the skunks were the same, or whether they were two completely different skunks.  Another, but slightly less alternative, is that there was a whole band of the little, sometimes stinky creatures, and they were all taking turns on jumping into the camera every 13 or so seconds.  (The camera takes 5 pictures in about two or three seconds for every activation of the motion sensor, and then waits another ten seconds before it will again activate).  Again, this hypothesis is slightly less likely, but not impossible.  So enjoy these pictures of the skunk/two skunks/band of skunks!  I also nabbed a picture of the "Least Concern" Steller's jay, a very attractive type of jay (hey, what Jay isn't?) native to the coniferous forests in and west of the Rocky Mountains in North America.

The Steller's jay is quite an interesting little creature, for many different reasons, so let's take a little look-see, shall we?  Let's start off with what I believe to easily be the most interesting tidbit of Steller's jay facts: it will mimic hawks!  The Steller's jay is omnivorous, eating about two-thirds plants, and the other third meat.  So when other birds are at an area where the Steller's jay wishes to feed, it will imitate the cry of the red-tailed hawk, or the red-shouldered hawk.  This, of course, would startle the other animals and cause them to flee, leaving the area devoid of competition from most other animals.  According to my bird book, the blue jay also "imitates hawks expertly."  Another excellent example of avian mimicry! 

The Steller's jay is also the provincial bird of British Columbia, in Canada, and is named for the Georg Wilhelm Steller, the German naturalist who first discovered the bird in 1741.  I wonder whether anyone ever told him that he spelled "George" wrong....

Steller has had numerous animals named after him, including: the Steller's sea cow (an extinct relative of the manatee), the Steller's sea lion, the Steller's sea eagle, and the Steller's eider (which is a type of duck).  He did much of his work in Russia, but is also considered to be a "pioneer of Alaskan natural history."  What a bro!

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At Last: Success With Primos!

Today's birthday post goes out to Megan Pullen!  Happy birthday Megan!  If you have a birthday coming up, just email me the date at cuyvaldar123946@gmail.com with the date and your favorite animal, and I will do my best to get a post in!

So the lock that I had ordered for my Primos Truth Cam finally arrived over the weekend, and on Sunday night I was finally able to set up the camera!  I made sure to use some of the fox urine in and around the area in the hopes of attracting red foxes.....and we got ourselves a hit!

For those of you wondering how in the heck I got fox urine, not to mention why, here is the skinny.  I started this thing called Foxbook.  Here is the description about what exactly it is, lifted from my "Foxbook" tab.  "Recently, my friend Masaki Kleinkopf and I started an experiment of sorts, to see whether foxes were in the area.  My mother had purchased fox urine to spray in her garden to keep garden pests such as squirrels from eating her vegetables.  I borrowed some and sprayed a bit on a wall near by to my use.  Underneath the spray site, I buried a plastic bin, and poured water into the dirt in the bin.  This turned the dirt into mud, and the plastic bin prevented the water from draining.  So now the bin remains muddy for days at a time, making it more likely for the fox visitors to leave footprints.  On the very first day, we got a hit, and three of the four days now we have gotten hits!  In perhaps my best pun yet, I created the term "Foxbook."  You see, it is like a social messaging site, where visitors can leave "Posts" on other peoples "Walls."  Haha."

So there is that.  We also got a skunky visitor, as well, along with a little child who tried to steal the camera from the tree.  Thank goodness for the lock!  Anyways, here are the pictures!  Enjoy them!

We have actually talked about foxes a great many times on this blog in the past.  Here are the posts in which we have done so:

• Channel Island Fox:  Shrinky Dink: The Channel Island Fox and the Island Effect
• Red Fox:  Guards of the Fairy Penguin
• Fennec Fox:  What Is It?  The Weekly Challenge #5 Answer
• Gray Fox:  The Fauna of South Carolina: Cetaceans, Foxes and Otters
• Red Fox:  The Fox's Animal Magnetism

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

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