Southern Delicacies

Like wild turkeys, the Virginia opossum is also non-native to California and introduced from the east. San Jose in 1910 was one such release point. As resilient and omnivorous as raccoons and bears, possums have expanded quickly, and today are relatively common up and down CA, and especially in rural, urban and suburban areas. I.e., around us.

Recently, after I set a 10 mega pixel cam trap on a pond edge to try and get wood ducks, one plunked down for a spell to gnaw at an itch.





Small eyes and a huge nasal cavity show these characters get around mostly by nose.

And their skull sure doesn't suggest a lot of brain power - check out that tiny cranium:

 

But they do have that prehensile tail, which is pretty cool. Oh - and 50 teeth - the most of any North American mammal.

(if you've ever seen one hiss at you, it seems more like 500).





After giving the cam one last glance, possum left.

But then came and went several times more during the night.





Perhaps hoping for one of these...



Yet another non-native species introduced to Cali from east of the Rockies for food.

In this case, instead of an omnivore that doesn't generally out-compete or over-eat native species (opossums kinda play well with others) - it's the American bullfrog - an aggressive carnivore that eats anything and everything it can grab and gulp - including insects, crawdads, fish, birds, eggs, mice, tadpoles and other frogs and bullfrogs. And in so doing, unfortunately, bullfrogs have helped decimate California's native red-legged and yellow-legged frogs.

Ah, consequences.



Btw - the bullfrog's ear tympanum shows you their sex - if proportional to their eye-size, it's a female, and if the drum is much larger, it's a male.

Personally, if I had to choose between the two - I'd definitely eat bullfrogs.

Maybe we should start a restaurant that serves "Non-Native Suppression Stir Frys"?

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References:

• Wikipedia - Virginia Opossum
• Wikipedia - American Bullfrog

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Good Gobblers

They may not be native to California, but if our President can pardon 2 and give them Facebook identities, then I figure I should post a few photos of the birds we love so much this time o' year.

When smothered with gravy.



















Hungry yet?

Happy Thanksgiving all.

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References:

• Wikipedia - Wild Turkey

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Seeing More Spots

When I pull a cam trap and do a quick in-field scope of the shots on the LCD screen, aside from photogenic Townsend's Bats, I am always pleased and satisfied if I see spots in the scenes.

The spots of my fave stinker that is - the western spotted skunk, Spilogale gracilis.

Such as these 2 photos of one I was happy to recently get on a Mono Basin hillside:





The cones near the skunk are pinyon pine. Which is interesting because it gives us a size reference. Big pinyon cones, such as the one on the far left, are about the size of a healthy lime.

With that size detail, the 2 photos pretty clearly explain an old pioneer nickname I once read for these spotty, palm-of-your-hand cutesters:

Kitten skunks.

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References:

• Wikipedia - Western Spotted Skunk
• Nature of a Man (this blog) - Who Chews? III
• Nature of a Man (this blog) - posts on cam trapping the Mono Basin

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On the Wing

It's a bit late for Halloween, or to celebrate the bats of our amazing San Francisco Giants, but since the random bat photo in The Attraction of Roadsides proved popular, I thought I'd post my best Chiroptera catch from this summer's cam traps for y'all:


A lucky shot of a Townsend's Big-eared Bat, Corynorhinus townsendii, in a Tehachapi cave

The above was taken by a 6MP Sony s600 homebrew cam trap. And while they aren't slow for camera traps, their 1.5 second start-up & re-shoot times aren't dSLR camera fast, so getting bats on the wing requires lucky timing, and good camera positioning.

So far my experiments have found that pointing the camera along the bat's flight corridor, much as you would point it down a road at a 30-ish degree angle, seems to give the best results. As you'd expect, like mammals walking a road, it increases the time bats are within the scene, and thus ups your chances of getting shots as they come and go.

But first you have to figure out the corridor they use. And then you have to hope that, like this nice Townsend's, they smile for the camera every once in a while.

Oh - you may notice a bright orange parasite is also 'on the wing' in the above photo. As I learned from my invert-wise friend Mr. Smiley, it's likely a bat fly of the Nycteribiidae family, which are small, wingless, flat, spider-like flies that live their lives on bats, tapped into a wing vein.

Wonder if the bat fly ever yells "wooohoo!!!" as they're ripping along?

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References:

• Wikipedia - Townsend's Big-eared Bat
• Wikipedia - Nycteribiidae
• Nature of a Man (this blog) - The Attraction of Roadsides
• Nature of a Man (this blog) - Return to the Bat Cave

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