Lone Oaks Farm BioBlitz Camera Trapping
We launched our Lone Oaks Farm master plan design process in January 2017. While on site for that first meeting, I worked with Ron Blair to set out 7 camera traps, hoping to catalog as many mammal species as we could during the winter months. This is really helpful because squeezing our camera trapping effort into the three days we spent on site for the BioBlitz would've produced little in terms of useful information. Between January and April, we checked in on the cameras once a month, refreshing batteries and downloading the images. Now, we can add those observations to the Lone Oaks Farm BioBlitz project. We discovered a bunch of species that we'd miss if we'd relied only on our eyes or our tracking skills. One animal we already knew was present in large numbers was white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). We intentionally set our cameras below knee height in order to capture some of the smaller mammal species on site. Thus, we got lots of images of Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), Eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus), and even a few photos of the under-appreciated (in this observer's humble opinion) woodchuck (Marmota monax).
Another common occurrence is the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus). The armadillo is a fairly recent migrant to West Tennessee. In the 1990s biologists began to notice armadillos popping up in new areas, outside their normal distributional range, which is Mexico and the southwest. They first entered the United States in the mid-1800s (Taulman and Robbins, 1996) crossing from Mexico into Texas. Since that time the armadillo spread eastward into portions of Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida. The most recent reports suggest that in addition, the armadillo now populates central Kansas, central Illinois, southwestern Indiana, western Kentucky, central Tennessee, all of Alabama, most of Georgia, and central South Carolina. Its' westward expansion appears limited by rainfall; it has not expanded into areas that receive less than 50 cm of annual precipitation. On the north-south line, the population has reached a latitude corresponding to an average minimum daily January temperature of -8 C in Kansas. This means that in the eastern states, armadillos may continue to expand northwards where they have not yet reached the -8 C zone (Taulman et al., 2014).
Our camera traps also documented some important mammalian carnivore species. Coyote (Canis latrans) appear regularly in the images, as do raccoon (Procyon lotor), Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginianum), and striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis). In one eerie photograph a coyote was captured walking away from the camera carrying what appears to be a deer leg.
The most exciting photos we discovered were of bobcats (Lynx rufus). Before these photos, we were unsure if these elusive predators were in the area. The two photos we were able to identify as bobcats confirm that they're in the area, and that they use Lone Oaks Farm. While exciting, this is not especially surprising, given the diversity of habitat on the property, and the abundance their prey animals; small mammals, birds, and amphibians. Bobcats are excellent hunters. Their presence suggests that Lone Oaks Farm supports a good balance of habitat and prey species. Presumably, if we are able to increase the amount of forest cover in early successional stages at Lone Oaks Farm, this will boost prey abundance and provide good stalking habitat for bobcats.
There are still more observations to be added, which will inch our stats upwards (exciting!). In the meantime I hope you enjoy scrolling through and commenting on the photos.
Camera trapping is a great, affordable way to document wildlife in your backyard. If anyone would like to know more about the ways it can be a fun and useful tool for all, I encourage checking out the Smithsonian Institute's eMammal project (http://emammal.si.edu/).
