 |
| Baby Gopher Snake |
It didn't take long after I brought my trail cams home that I realized I wanted to take one more crack at photographing the bobcat and fox going either up or down the ravine. I actually bought a new GardePro camera to replace the old Foxelli cams I've been using for years, but which seem to be getting toward the end of their life cycle. Also, I like the GardePro's "no glow" night vision, the working microphone, and the better clock. The Foxelli mic was poorly designed and didn't work, and the clock always ran fast, but despite the degrading video quality it's still useful enough to keep at home for backyard critters.
Anyway, I took the two GardePro cams back up today and set them up in the ravine in a way to catch critters approaching from either high or low, and also crossing the ravine. I biked up today to catch the cooler weather, since by Thursday it's supposed to get hot.
On the way up toward Rock Spring I found a road-killed baby gopher snake. That's the one posted above. On the way back down I saw a second road-killed baby gopher snake and posed that one on a nearby lichen-crusted rock.
After I set the cams I ate the sandwich and apple I'd brought along and watched the acorn woodpeckers doing their thing. The tide was pretty high by the time I rode back down to sea level. I saw some shorebirds foraging in the pickleweed and figured they were the same greater yellowlegs I've stopped to photograph before, only to second-guess myself, then turn around and go back to check in case they were something else. So much of the ground had been inundated by the tide that the birds were in taller grass and pickleweed than last time, and I could barely see their long yellow legs.
 |
| The second baby gopher snake. |
 |
| The waning gibbous moon sets behind the West Point Inn. |
 |
| Acorn Season! |
 |
| Greater yellowlegs on the prowl. |
 |
| As this bird was keeping an eye on the sky, it looked through the lens of the FZ80 as though it had some kind of mohawk on its head, but it's just some pickleweed in the background. |
* * *
