This year's field assistants: Jared Bruck (returning from last year), Warren Holmes (trapper extraordinaire), Trina Hancock, Amy
Kuczynski
and Karen Hurner
A record snowfall year in the area, so Horse Corral had about 6-7' of snow when we arrived in late April.
Sigh......
Snow is good for one thing - spotting animal tracks. We routinely saw a coyote, and many, many coyote tracks through the meadow.
Our Super Stud from last summer, "Beard" is back again! Here he is, hanging out at the entrance to his burrow. Again he had to tunnel through about 6 feet of snow to get above ground. This burrow quickly filled with water as the relentless sunshine and days in the 60s and 70s started to melt the snow. He moved to the west side of the meadow to burrows with better drainage.
To keep tabs on our adult males, who travel far and wide to find sexually receptive females, we started radio tracking them this summer. Here Warren sets out to find a recently collared male.
And here is Beard, sporting a fashionable collar. What a way to keep up with the little guy!
"From Here to Eternity", a squirrel's tale
Announcing the 2006 Darwin Award for keeping their eyes on the prize.
Here we see "Ears" and a female mating by water's edge. Their heads are pointed down toward the creek. The following sequence of pictures span about three minutes of time....
I missed the final shot, but as you can see below, they fell into the creek!
Here's the female, soaking wet.
No matter. Ears, on the left, soon finds her and they finish the deed, this time under the bush on dry land.
Would you believe, she next mated with "Slash", again by the creek edge, and sure enough, they fell in too!
