Water Dish Visitors

The game camera caught some nice shots of visitors to our wildlife water dish recently. The game camera doesn't seem to bother the animals although I think some of them do notice it, because they appear to look right at at.

In any case, I enjoy retrieving the image card every week and the Christmas-morning anticipation of looking through the typically hundreds of images to see what we caught.

First is a nice white-tailed (Odocoileus virginianus) doe. She looks young to me, but I'm certainly no expert. Speaking just from what I've observed over the last few years, the older does appear heavier than this one. This one looks sleek and graceful.

Next is a young white-tailed buck. You can see his fuzzy antlers coming in. They're covered in velvet which is a living skin-like tissue which provides the growing antlers with blood, oxygen, and nutrients. The antler starts as cartilage and becomes mineralized. Once the antler is full-size, the velvet sheds and the antler bone dies. Male deer re-grow their antlers every year. We frequently find discarded ones on our property. Interestingly, about 1 in 10,000 females have antlers and this is usually associated with hermaphroditism.

Lastly, we caught an elusive gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) in daytime. This photo was taken at 4 pm. We've caught gray foxes before but always when it was dark. They're nocturnal and very shy. It's a rare treat to see one in person.

Wild Things

Here's the latest best-of from our game camera.

First is a feral pig (Sus scrofa). While they are invasive and cause a lot of damage to the environment, I can't help but admire what a magnificent animal this one is. He's large and looks to be in excellent health with a thick winter coat. I guess, trying to see the bright side, it means our property is in good shape too, to supply him with enough nutrition to look the way he does. I'm still going to try to get rid of him!

Next is a gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). They're very elusive. The game camera has caught them before, but never as clearly. Usually, they're a blur as they run through the frame.

Finally, a skunk. It's a striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis). This one is very close to the camera and his head is out of frame.

Crazy Like A Fox

Mary sent me these photos, taken with her cell phone last week, of a gray fox at her school.

Keep in mind that her school is in the middle of Kyle, Texas. Kyle is not a big city, but it is nonetheless fairly developed. It consists of residential neighborhoods around a small downtown area. The fox found his way onto the school grounds and decided to sun himself and take a nap on the school's air conditioning evaporator units.

Of course, this caused quite a stir at the school and many of the teachers went outside to get a better look and capture the moment. They were able to get quite close. Mary and her friends think that maybe the fox was sick, but I think he's just enjoying the day.

The facility folks came to catch him and release him elsewhere and that ended the excitement.

Foxes are canids and are related to dogs, wolves, jackals and coyotes. Gray foxes range through the southern half of North American and as far south as Venezuela and Colombia. They were once the dominant fox in the Eastern United States but human development allowed the red fox to become predominant.

The gray foxes  must be very resilient and adaptable animals for this one to make his living in Kyle. They are omnivorous and will hunt rabbits and birds. They also eat whatever fruits they can find. They gray fox, in general, eats more vegetable matter than the red fox. I like the fact that even in the middle of our civilization, animals can make a home. Maybe all is not lost.

We sometimes see them on our property, but they are quite elusive. Usually we just catch a glimpse of them running away. I've seen dens on the property which might be theirs, but they could also be used by other animals.