Friday, October 19, 2012

deer, Roosevelt elk and bears. Game cam photos

Well, I set the camera up on the wasp nest for the bear and he returned. The problem is that the second nest was too far away for the infrared flash. He only showed up at night, but I got some nice photos of him eating the apples I tossed there, a number of different deer, and our Muddy Valley resident elk herd. The camera took about 1,200 photos. I tossed a few hundred. Some just too dark at night, and a lot of close ups of elk hide. There was a series when an elk licked the lens which started out black and then fuzzy until the camera dried off. Also some blurry shots when the T-post I have the camera on was used as a back-scratcher.
The Lazy Farmer is probably not talking to me now as I emailed way too many photos to him and probably crashed his I.S.P. which is not the fastest, as we are on the fringes of modern civilization here.
If you click on one of the pictures, you can enlarge it. A neat feature I recently discovered.





















There were several nice bulls

 He's looking at the wasp hole the bear dug up!








The time stamp says 14:55. I checked the camera at 15:15. They were probably watching me as I drove up in the jeep.





Sunday, October 7, 2012

Bears & Yellowjacket nests & Trespassers & elk

Every now and then I'll see a yellowjacket nest that a bear has started to uncover. They dig it out enough to disturb the wasps, then return the a time or two to dig out some of the grubs to eat. He or she have been back a few times to this one.

A couple of times I have set up a game camera to catch it when it returns.

There was an undisturbed nest close to the uncovered nest, so I remembered to bring the camera this time.

These were some pictures the camera took in the past.




Sometime it takes photos of other things:

This time it was a trespasser hunting



He walked right by the camera without seeing it because he was looking at this deer. Note the time stamp.



This guy showed up later

As did these fellows










Saturday, October 6, 2012

cutting firewood

We're getting at it a little late this year, but the weather is cooperating!




Some friends came by for some wood


My wife started singing The Lumberjack Song and now I can't get it out of my mind every time I go up there in the woods. (not that there's anything wrong with that)

There was a pretty big hornet's nest!

The Bald Faced Hornet
Family: Vespidae
Genus: Dolichovespula
Species: D. maculata



Friday, October 5, 2012

wild turkey (s)

I just took this photo from my porch. I haven't seen wild turkeys around here since the nearby winery started feeding them. They pretty much domesticated them. The closest sighting in that field was a bottle in the back of someone's truck.  I hope they stick around until November. :-)