Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
November 1, 2017
Early days yet for anything interesting to show up on the trail cam, but here’s to “not seen” as meaningful nature news.
For our bucket today, I have a few quick photos of what’s showed up on the card after our first round of setting up a trail cam on the boat. With a special surprise for readers who don’t just skim over diaries missing a title-photo “hook”, lol.
Bucketeers may remember our ongoing battle with river otters who use our boat as a playground/dinner table/toilet. Mostly they’re on the stern deck but they are very persistent about trying to get into the cabin, which means unsnapping, turning toggles, unhooking bungee cords, unzipping the canvas — or just tearing through it. Which we’d rather they didn’t.
The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the phenological patterns that are quietly unwinding around us. To have the Daily Bucket in your Activity Stream, visit Backyard Science’s profile page and click on Follow.
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We set up our trail cam as high as we could attach it, aimed downward toward the swim step where they climb onto the boat. We’re hoping to see what they do once they get onto the boat.
So far, we’ve captured the crow above, and the following:
That’s it. No otters. Yet.
Adjustments we’ve made: angling the camera downward a bit more to get a view of the top of the stern deck, which is where they hang out and get access to the canvas. Also, sharp eyes may have noted the date/time stamps are wrong; we reset that information.
How is the lack of otter pictures meaningful? It tells us that otters don’t visit the boat very often, and 4 days went by with no visit. From what I’ve seen and read, otters tend to make a circuit around their “home area”, revisiting a particular site at regular intervals.
We KNOW there are otters around. Here’s one I surprised on the nearby dock. It had been snoozing in the sun I guess. When it woke up it ambled to the edge of the dock, looked at me, looked at Mr O working on the boat, and then slipped into the water. Perhaps the trail cam will catch it over there later that day, or sometime in the next week.
It’s cold and cloudy today in the Pacific Northwest. Temperature 35°F, running the wood stove for the first time this fall (we usually use a heat pump but supplement with wood when it gets cold).
What are you seeing — or not seeing — in your natural neighborhood?
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