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Petra, Maine Wildlife

Discussion in 'Pets & Critters' started by Ken Anderson, Jun 28, 2015.

  1. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Here are a few more photos from my wildlife cameras, taken from a couple of clearing in our woods. Here are a few from one clearing.

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  2. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Here's from another clearing. This is the busiest clearing in my woods, since several animal trails cross here.

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    #17
  3. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    These are from the same clearing as the last one.

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  4. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    While I was out in the woods, I heard a woodpecker hard at work. I followed the sound and, while the bird flew away before I could get a picture of it, here is what he was working at.

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    It's not a dead tree, but the woodpecker could tell that it had a hollow inside and that there are apparently bugs to eat there. In fact, I can see a bug in the picture, to the bottom left of the hole that the woodpecker made.
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    Here's an older one, a little further up on the same tree.
     
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  5. K E Gordon

    K E Gordon Veteran Member
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    Those are some amazing pics,especially the lynx,and the snowshoe hare. I don't think they are all that common. It was really a treat. Thanks for posting those. I have a feeling if I put up a wildlife cam and checked it every so often, I would see coyotes..as well as the huge game birds and deer we have roaming around here. I used to have some wild turkeys nesting right behind my house.
     
    #20
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  6. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    When we lived out in the country in north Idaho, we would see deer on a regular basis, and now and then a moose would wander through. Sometimes, they could get on the highway and stop traffic until they felt like moving again.
    Coyotes would come up really close to the trailer house, so we had to make sure that no animals were outside after dark.
    Even in the day, I lost one of my little dogs to a cougar that was right in the back yard and killed him. It was awful !
    It was on a Sunday morning, and I was getting ready for church, and had let the dogs outside to go to the bathroom before we left, and then they started barking. When I ran out right away, it was already too late, and my poor little Tonka was lying there in the snow dying.
    The vet said from the size of the teeth marks, it had to have been something large like a bear or cougar that killed him. Since it was winter and deep snow, the bear should have been in hibernation; so we thought it had to be a cougar.
     
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  7. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    The person in charge of lynx management in Maine for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife told me a few weeks ago that when Canadian Lynx are accidentally caught in a trap intended for a fisher or some other trappable animal, they sometimes ask the trapper to simply release it if is unharmed. She said that they are not aggressive animals and that there haven't been any reports of anyone being harmed by a lynx while releasing it from a trap. They are fairly common in northern Maine, but are still on the endangered list. They mostly eat snowshoe hares, and we have a lot of them on my property. Probably eighty percent of the pictures that my cameras take are of snowshoe hares.
     
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  8. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    Wonderful pictures Ken! I can tell by what you've written that you really love this place and would probably enjoy living out there year round once you get things set up for this. What do you think happened to the third bear cub?
    When I was much younger and still living with my family we lived in Summerville, SC on at least an acre of property. Surrounding that property on all four sides were acres of woods and some of my siblings and I with a few friends would explore those woods to our hearts content as often as we had tbe free time to do so. We built Tee Pees and even a one room log cabin in the woods. There were no No Trepassing signs posted anywhere in those days and we all had a wonderful time pretending we were pioneers settling our land. We would shoot squirrels with our 22's and catch fish with our cane poles and once we had skinned and scaled our food my mom would cook us the best squirrel fricassee and fried fish with hush puppies...it was meals fit for Royalty!

    I loved those days which were one of the best times of my life...even to this day. If there was such a thing as reincarnation then I must have been a Pioneer woman in a former life because I still feel I would be so at home in that lifestyle. I guess that is one of the reasons "Little House on the Prairie" was always one of my favorite shows too.

    Maybe you could consider starting a Seniors Only Commune out on those hundred acres. ;)
     
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    Last edited: May 20, 2016
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  9. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Black bears are not prone to disease, and we don't have mountain lions or other natural predators that would be likely to take a bear cub that is in proximity of its mother. There is plenty of food and water, so my guess would be one of the more common predators of bear cubs -- other bears. Mom might have difficulty protecting all three of her cubs from another bear so I'm just guessing of course, but it might be that another bear killed it. It could have been hit crossing a road somewhere but the only road is a couple of miles away, and that's not the direction I'd imagine a mother bear would take her cubs, since it involves crossing some large potato fields.

    As a child, we also didn't have to concern ourselves with whose land we were on, with only a couple of exceptions, and the state didn't worry one bit about kids fishing without a license. Times have changed.
     
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  10. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    I drove up north again this morning to put a few more cameras out so I picked up the disks from the three cameras I had set up a few days ago. The bear came and at all my apples but did so at night, and the pictures aren't very good. This is the best one.

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  11. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    These are from a few years ago.


    Shortly after I set the camera up in a tree in this clearing...

    Look who shows up.
     
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  12. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Here's a few more.


    After setting up the camera and cutting some of the ferns away, I returned to the clearing to leave some apples, not knowing that the bear had been there.

    This last one is from another camera in another clearing. Same bear, though.
     
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  13. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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  14. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    That's some really nice looking property you have Ken. Reminds me of pioneering days in the wilderness...before so many places became "concrete cities". I can see why you love it up there and why you want to keep it a natural habitat as much as possible for the wildlife up there. It's the way God created it to be and that is really beautiful. It must be hard to not want to live up there full time.
     
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  15. K E Gordon

    K E Gordon Veteran Member
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    I really like your wildlife pics Ken. I really wonder if I set up a critter cam in the back what would show up...We mostly have large birds and deer around here..but many other animals could be spotted like weasels, turtles, squirrels, groundhogs, aka woodchucks..raccoon,and I would not be surprised to
    see a coyote,,bobcat or even a bear perchance, although I have never seen tracks. There are beaver in the vicinity too, but they stay closer to the water.
     
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