One Antlered Deer

Here's an interesting white-tailed deer missing one of his antlers.

It's early for bucks to be losing their deciduous antlers.  Really early.  In most cases around here, they drop their antlers during the last week of January to the last week of March.  It's interesting, for sure, but stranger things have happened in the outdoors.

Bear Broken Camera

It's always a fight against the black bears when you've got cameras in the woods.

They get a lot more curious then some other animals, and their natural curiosity can be a problem.

This camera was torn down and ripped apart by a black bear.  Its casing was broken, the screen cracked, and batteries torn out.

All that was left at the scene was a single, decent bear print, and leaves thrown all over where the bear sat around or dug up something to eat.

More Fairfax Coyotes

This one is a full-grown adult coyote that looks beefy, muscular, and pretty furry.

It may have some genetics of wolf in it, making it a hybrid or coy-wolf, but there's no telling from just a camera-trap image.

Either way,  it's a big one.

What's odd is that this coyote came by the camera very quickly (on both the second and the third nights), when usually coyotes appear on trail cam around the 5th night or later.

I put up a few more cameras in the area, so I'll check back in a few days to see what else is around.

Red Fox Rendezvous

I am putting the final touches on some graphs, charts, and tables that show the results (and how-to's) of my red fox survey between the months of this March, 2013 and March, 2014 in park lands and private lands of Northern Virginia.

Results include current living foxes, foxes that have been hit by cars (or died by other means), foxes that have moved out of the area, and fox kits

Here is a very watered-down and simplistic version of my data:

In a 24 acre plot, there were 3 individual red foxes

In a 60 acre plot, there were 4 individual red foxes.

In a 350 acre plot, I've found that there were at least 7 individual red foxes.

In a 430 acre plot, there were 9 individual red foxes.

In a 600 acre plot, there were 9 individual red foxes.

I get this data by comparing camera-trap images of different cameras set up in each park.  A red fox that appears at one camera (under normal circumstances) cannot be the same red fox that appears at another camera 1 mile away, 30 seconds later.  BAM!  That's two individual foxes.  Some red foxes look completely different from eachother, others are a little more difficult to recognize.  Figure in more parks and a heck of a lot more cameras, and results like this pour in to my computer on a daily basis.

White Legs

I've named this particular red fox, "White Legs".  How I came up with this name should be obvious.  I blew up and cropped some of the photos of White Legs so you could better see the coloration of its fur.

Those legs are just so incredibly bright!  What does this mean exactly?  Well, for me, it means that this fox is going to be very easy to identify every time it comes up on camera.  I can estimate the populations of foxes even better when the animals vary this much in color.

Take a look at the picture below of another red fox and notice the different colors of fur on its legs.

White Legs resides in Fairfax County and cannot yet be identified as male nor female.

I hope we'll all be seeing more of White Legs shortly.

7 Raccoons

Usually I don't enjoy raccoon images that come up after every time camera-traps are checked since I get so many of them, but these images are unusual.  There are 7 raccoons in the pictures.  I've never seen this many on camera before.  

They're all hanging out and feasting on the remains of a deer that I found at that exact spot.  They could also be eating the massive amount of insects that are feasting on the deer remains.  Either way, it's interesting to see so many raccoons.

These pictures are only 2 of the 9,800 that I have to check soon.