white-tailed deer

Sky Island Wildlife

I’m just back from a few days exploring one of Arizona’s sky islands. After receiving a bit of monsoon rainfall, the wildflowers and wildlife were quite abundant and the formerly dry landscape had turned green with new plant growth.

Can anyone help ID this plant? Copyright: Greg Joder.

Beautiful Lupine flowers with butterfly pollinator. Copyright: Greg Joder.

While exploring I also checked three trail cameras I’ve had in the region for several months. It was exciting to see all the critters captured by the cameras, including a sow black bear with two cubs.

I also had the chance to get this beautiful rattlesnake to move off the road:

Rattlesnake enjoying the morning sun. Copyright: Greg Joder.

Monsoon Flooding

There have been a number of days here in Tucson when the monsoon rains have caused a lot of flooding. Today I checked two of my trail cameras and found that one of them captured two flooding events. The following clips are chronological and if you keep an eye on the rock in the upper right you’ll see how high the flooding range is. The water level rises and falls greater than 6 feet between each heavy rain event and in a short period of time:

Audubon Research Ranch Camera Traps

Two days ago I checked my camera traps at the Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch of the National Audubon Society with my friend Rene. On the way to a location where I have two camera traps we found a freshly dead deer:

Dead white-tailed deer buck. Copyright: Greg Joder.

It became apparent to us that the deer had not been brought down by a predator, so we reported our find to the Research Ranch management. At this point all we know is that AZ Game and Fish is investigating. Coincident to this, my two trail cameras that were within a few-hundred meters of the dead deer were missing the SD cards. A frustrating loss of a months-worth of images/activity. Given that there is both illegal hunting and drug smuggling in the area, there’s no telling who stole the camera cards or who killed the deer.

Despite this, my other cameras on the Research Ranch captured some fun images:

American Kestrel. Copyright: Greg Joder.

Here is a time-lapse of the Red-tailed Hawk taking a bath: