ollerton's Favorites

Epic tracking in a desert wash the morning after a thunderstorm. Special features of this species in one series of photos. Compared to gray fox, the tracks of this species are rounder, with more fur, and slightly smaller than gray fox.

26 FEB 2021 ANZA BORREGO DESERT: On our quarterly transect of the Narrows - while investigating woodrat nests - the Anza Borrego Desert Tracking Team came across what appeared at first blush to be a very large bobcat latrine under rip rap supporting the steep bank of Highway 78. The scats were all on the small side for bobcat - approximately 3/8 - 1/2" diameter - and not well segmented. A few were connected in typical tootsie-roll lengths but many were not. None of the team had ever seen anything like this before. We find lots of bobcat scat in the Narrows, much of it in latrines, but nothing under a rip rap wall in such a volume, and none of it this small.

I put a cam on the "scat cave" on 26 February and retrieved the
SD Card 14 March 2021. Seven animals appeared. Most notable was a Ringtail 26 Feb just a few hours after I departed. The scat matches Mark Elbroch's and James Lowery's descriptions for Ringtail.

Other images captured were of a Rock Wren, Black-throated Sparrow, Bryant's Woodrat, Merriam's K-rat, Peromyscus, Antelope Ground Squirrel and a Desert Cottontail.
San Diego Tracking Team and Anza Borrego Tracking Team trail camera wildlife monitoring of wildlife in the The Narrows area of Anza Borrego Desert State Park by permit with California state parks.

Found deceased on road; used gloves to handle for study photos and left the bird on-site after. I especially wanted to document those zygodactyl feet (pictured is a right foot) for gripping those vertical surfaces, as well as the stiff, downward-propping tail feathers that provide mechanical support to the body while pecking/ drilling.

Black bear mark tree adjacent to old dirt road. Bear had decapitated the tree and bent the top off. The landowner later trimmed the tree remains off the road. Two types of sign are seen on the tree. Some of the branches show clipping by humans. The rest of the damage was caused by black bear.