in absentia

July 3 3 PM

Between our family vacation and lots of other things over the previous month, I have not had any extended, sit-down visits to the mandala in a long while. I've had numerous short visits mostly to check on the trail cameras. I installed these in late May to see what's in the mandala when I'm not around. It's of course no surprise that I've ended up with lots of pictures of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), though I did find several fawns. I had expected to capture some predators but those have largely been lacking. I've seen red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in the vicinity and I'm fairly confident that coyotes (Canis latrans) are present too but the cameras only caught one very wet fox (see previous post). Perhaps most surprising has been the multiple captures of great blue herons (Ardea herodias). These were unexpected given the lack of open water here but rather just a relatively small, shallow stream. The captured images show the herons along an even smaller tributary. Certainly there are fish in the stream but just small bite-sized fishes. I've caught a few amusing pictures of squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) checking out the camera and occasionally songbirds passing through but usually not possible to identify species (at least to my untrained ornithological eye). Within the past week, I also found a pair of raccoons (Procyon lotor) scaling a tree. The cameras also captured a number of bipeds (Homo sapiens) and once their canine companion. In addition to the selected images from the previous post, here are a few more:

The trail cameras served an ulterior motive. There's been increased traffic in the forest this year. Traffic of the motorized sort. Lots of new dirt bike and four-wheeler trails have appeared, existing trails have been turned into mud pits, and lots of new stream crossings established. All of this really disturbs me, mostly as it damages the ecological integrity of the forest. Unfortunately it appears as if our campus security team isn't interested in this problem so we need to explore other options. I placed the trail cameras to benefit from obvious deer/wildlife trails but also knowing that offroaders access these trails too, but I wasn't aware of the extent. There are two or three groups that have used the area in the past month, with one or two visits per week with increasing damage to the trails and stream crossings. Here's a sampling:

Despite the annoyance at all of these offroaders, one of them did provide me a good laugh: