The foxes have been very present the last couple of weeks, showing up on all three cams, but mostly on this one, although this particular frame is a composite image.
Only once did the fox get caught before the cam's night vision went into effect.
Another cam caught a fox in a nice pose, with perhaps part of the tail of a second fox on the lower left, and a strange flying insect in the upper right.
Since I was just going up to do a camera check, I rode my bike, leaving home with 4 out of 5 bars on my battery. That would have been enough if the headwinds hadn't been so strong. I'd never ridden the battery all the way to empty before (the gauge is at the bottom of the display) and was interested to find out what would happen. I learned that the last bar drains much more quickly than the first bar, and that the battery seemed to die all at once, rather than tapering off.
This is where the first battery died. Long live the second battery.
Despite the windy conditions, it was a delectable, crystalline morning on the mountain.
I had moved the chaparral cam into the woods to this new location, where a Robin struck a pose.
A Hermit Thrush too.
And Mr. Gray Squirrel.
When I saw that the cam had fired off nearly 800 frames (where the other two cams had less than 300 each), I figured I'd have a lot of blank frames caused by branches blowing in the wind. Nope. The trail I'd set up on was less a game trail and more of a Wood Rat playground.
Almost all of the close-up frames were blurs.
The cams picked up surprisingly few deer in the last couple of weeks.
But in addition to lots of fox captures, there also were numerous jackrabbits. Some were caught posing....
Others bounding.
Note the fawn's mom back in the upper left.
Say cheese!
I decided to move the wood rat cam to a new location, where I've seen rattlesnakes in years past. I'd scouted this spot on the way in without seeing any snakes, but on the way out, at 10 a.m., Mr. Buzz was sunning himself about where I expected to find him. I set up the cam very nearby in the hope of capturing a hunter in the chaparral (whether fox, bobcat, coyote, or snake), but it's quite possible I won't capture anything at all.
Not only are the rattlesnakes out, but the side creeks are nearly dried up. The one that I've been refilling my water bottle at the last couple of times was dry, with just a couple of small, stagnant pools well below the spot where I'd been filling up. I thought I'd refill at the Pantoll Ranger Station but I forgot by the time I got down there, and I also figured I could eat a couple more plums at a tree I'd stopped at on the way up. It was a cool day, though, and I made it home with water to spare.
I didn't stop to take any pictures between home and Mt. Tam, at least not until I came back through Golden Gate Park just in time to catch a Black Lives Matter march as it passed in front of the Conservatory of Flowers, headed toward the beach.
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