I was in Big Bend for a couple of nights of bat catching and saw more than 18 mammals (11 of them bats) and 7 lifers including the brilliant Ghost-faced Bat, Western Yellow Bat and Davis Mountain Cottontail.
http://mammalwatching.com/Nearctic/nearctusatexas.html
I’m off to Hungary tonight for a weekend chasing Hamsters and various small mammals
Jon
We finally managed to make it down to Pinnacles and Carrizo Plain for a few days but it was really windy and dry. We only ended up seeing 8 mammals and no Kit Fox unfortunately. It was cool to see Pronghorn in California and the San Joaquin Antelope Squirrel and Giant Kangaroo Rat were two new species for us. So, the trip wasn’t a total bust.
Follow this link and Scroll down to read the report:
http://mammalwatching.com/Nearctic/nearctusacalifornia.html
Alan
Here’s a report of my trip at the weekend to Gloucester and Cape Cod. In 24 hours I saw 10 species including Sei and Northern Right Whales and New England Cottontails.
Jon
Two new reports
Arizona and New Mexico (2013): Paul Carter, 24 days & 29 species including Hooded Skunk, Kit Fox and White-nosed Coatis.
Alligator River, NWR (2013): Cheryl Antonucci, 2 days & 4 species including River Otters and Black Bears. But no Red Wolves or Marsh Rabbits 
Jon
On 14 April 2013, my wife Marta and I unexpectedly had a mammal “big day” in California. We left our home in Angwin (Napa Valley) at 3:30 am to drop off a visiting friend, Bixis Colina, at the airport in Sacramento. A few hundred meters from home a GRAY FOX trotted across the road. Within the next half hour a VIRGINIA OPOSSUM waddled along the road, a BLACK-TAILED JACKRABBIT hopped onto the road and a RACCOON hustled across the road as we sped through Pope Valley and Chiles Valley. Later, when a BOBCAT (my lucky 13th!) dashed across the highway near Lake Berryessa, I realized we were going to have a mammal big day! I’d had many bird big days (up to 198 species in Washington state), but never a mammal big day. Soon we saw a few MULE DEER beside the highway.
While returning from the airport after sunrise, I stopped at several places along Putah Creek to search for River Otters, where I had seen them before. Unfortunately I didn’t have any luck with the otters, but I enjoyed rock climbing on some huge boulders while Marta implored me not to fall. And then I spotted a tiny black-and-white dot moving on a distant hill across the river, whipped out the big camera, and photographed a STRIPED SKUNK! We also saw a few WESTERN GRAY SQUIRRELS in the trees and when we visited a picnic area at Lake Berryessa we found a CALIFORNIA GROUND SQUIRREL.
A distant Striped Skunk photographed through a 400 mm lens.
We were both recovering from colds and had planned to relax at home after returning from the airport, but after taking a long nap (we were really sleepy!) and eating lunch, we decided to have a romantic date on the coast. At Bodega Bay we saw several CALIFORNIA SEA LIONS. It was super windy so Marta didn’t join me when I hiked out to a point to search for other pinnipeds on a tiny offshore rock. With my binoculars I tried to pick out a Steller’s Sea Lion among the California Sea Lions on the distant rock, and took some photos with a 400 mm lens; I think I can make out at least one in my photos, but I’m not certain so I’m not counting it. Then we sped to Goat Rock State Beach, where we saw a few dozen HARBOR SEALS, including an adorable white pup.
At several wetlands along the coast I searched for River Otter, including a pond where I had seen them once previously, but failed to find any. Disappointed but not surprised, we drove home. Alas, I had to pee, so I stopped beside the road high above the Russian River. A moment before returning to the car, I magically spotted through the Redwood trees a lone RIVER OTTER swimming downstream! I dashed back to the car and managed to show it to Marta, who thought I was joking. It was my best pee stop ever! Just before dark we arrived at the campus of Pacific Union College, where we live and work, and spotted several WESTERN PIPISTRELLES (tiny bats) fluttering above the sewage ponds.
Our final tally was a lucky 13 species on Saturday the 13th (luckily not Friday!), including my 13th Bobcat. All were free-ranging native species found within Napa, Yolo and Solano Counties of northern California.
To put our big day into perspective, I did an online search for previous mammal big days but found very few reports. The world record appears to be 42 species, seen on 29 May 2004 in Tanzania by Charles Foley (see “A Mammal Big Day,” published in Birding 37:128-130, 2005).
In North America, the highest one-day tally I could find was 17 species, reported from Marin County, California, by the late Rich Stallcup, but no date or list of species was provided (www.prbo.org/obs_cms/index.php?module=browse&browse_issue_num=154&browse_article_num=212&chooseIssue=1).
In late September 2011, Brian and Eileen Keelan saw 14 species, including three during a whale-watching trip, in Monterey County, central California; an additional two species were captured in traps (public.keelan.warpmail.net/chr11.pdf), but as Charles Foley reasoned in his article cited above, only free-ranging native species should be counted due to restrictions in some parts of the world on trapping.
After I posted a short summary of our big day on a birding listserve for the northern San Francisco Bay area, a few others replied that they had seen more species of mammals in a day. Peter Pyle reported doing informal mammal big days when returning from the Farallon Islands, and once tallied 17 species (18 if the introduced House Mouse is included), which ties Rich Stallcup’s record, but he could not remember the day or year, which occurred during the late 1990s or early 2000s. Alan Wight reported that his Point Reyes Bird Observatory Birdathon team, the Sonoma Gray Jays, had been keeping track of their mammal sightings while searching for birds since 2005, and had recorded up to 16 species (17 if the introduced Wild Boar is included) on 25 September 2010.
Considering the tremendous efforts of birders to establish big day records throughout North America, which have been compiled for decades by the American Birding Association, surprisingly little effort has been made to establish a mammal big day record. Based on the information that I have found, the North American mammal big day record for native species appears to be a modest 17 species, set independently by Richard Stallcup and Peter Pyle. However, it is quite possible that somebody else has observed more. A more serious effort combining marine and terrestrial mammals in California could potentially push the list much higher. It is high time for somebody to up the ante!
Floyd E. Hayes
Department of Biology
Pacific Union College
Angwin, California, USA
An nice article and video about building highway crossings for Pronghorn
http://focusingonwildlife.com/news/safe-passage-for-pronghorn-with-videoclip/
Jon
Algonquin Provincial Park, about 4 hours north of Toronto, is one of only two places where one can see wild Red Wolves. The genetics of the Red (or Eastern) Wolf is something of a mystery to me. The IUCN Redlist entry claims that the Red Wolf only exists in the wild near Alligator River in North Carolina and then that there are “suspected Red Wolf-type Wolves” in Algonquin. The people are Algonquin don’t seem to harbour many doubts though, even if the wolves have a little Coyote in them, they seem to be the real deal and unlike wolves elsewhere in the eastern half of north America have stayed genetically pure.
I only went up for a couple of nights at the end of March and though I didn’t see a Wolf, I came closer than I’d expected to. Ian Shanahan, one of the park’s naturalists, was extremely helpful before I arrived. He told me some areas of the park where wolves had recently been seen. And when I got there, Rick Stonks, the senior naturalist, was also super helpful. Canadians it seems, really are as friendly as the movies make out.
In a nutshell, the best way to see a Wolf would be to visit during the height of winter if and when the park put out a deer carcass in front of the visitors centre. This seems certain to attract wolves and in early March a road-killed moose carcass saw wolves visiting every day for about 3 weeks (though most of these visits were at night, or early in the morning it seems). They do not put out carcasses in the summer (they would attract bears an animal Algonquin boasts a healthy population of). There was no carcass when I was there so my best bet was to patrol the park road and hope to get lucky. The road is a natural boundary between several packs’ territories and lone animals will often stay close to the road as they prefer to travel in between the territories of others. I arrived on Friday evening and apparently just missed a very rare sight: a wolf had been sleeping all afternoon out on the ice of Lake at Two Rivers, in the middle of the park. Many had seen it. Damn. The next morning I patrolled the road at dawn and somehow missed a wolf that had been spotted at 8.20 about a kilometre from where I was driving. These two near misses were close enough for me to want to visit again!
The other mammal in Algonquin I was keen to see was a Fisher. Again, they are not uncommon but are quite rarely seen, though one had been on the bird feeder at the visitor centre a few days before I arrived. A Marten was a more regular visitor to the same feeder. I wasn’t lucky. Though in 36 hours I saw a Woodchuck (an uncommon sighting), a Beaver and what might have been an Otter crossing the road, along with several Red Squirrels and Eastern Chipmunks.
Its a gorgeous park and I will definitely return.
Jon
Great photo! The only times I have seen this species they have been racing along so its good to know they stop occasionally.
http://oceana.org/en/blog/2013/03/grins-and-fins-meet-the-sociable-false-killer-whale
Jon
I was in Quebec for the weekend with my kids earlier this month. Mainly it was to visit the Hotel du Glace in Quebec City, which was a lot of fun for a night but would be much less fun if we’d stayed any longer. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to check out Parc Du Bic, between Rimouski and Riviere du Loupe, which I had heard was a hotspot for Fishers (its a hotspot for Porcupines too hence the Fishers).
The woman working in the visitors centre seemed not to know anything about Fishers and her English (like many people we met) was not at all good. The park is closed to vehicles during the snow season so we spent 3 hours walking the trails one afternoon, and another 3 hours the next morning. No Fishers. Maybe some tracks though I wouldn’t swear to it. The only mammals we saw in fact were a couple of Red Squirrels.
The reports from a few years ago that I’d heard had made it sound like you could see 3 Fishers in a day in Parc du Bic. That may still be the case, and it might be easier in the summmer, but I’m not at all sure that is still the case. That said it is a nice park and so I will try to spend another weekend there (this time without my kids this time so I can focus more on the Fishers), and I will go during the summer when you can drive right into the park and cover more ground in a vehicle.
I’m going to check out Algonquin park over Easter and maybe I will get lucky there. Maybe…
Jon
Two new reports on mammalwatching.com (both at the top of the “other trip reports” section at the bottom of each page)
Florida & California, 2013: Romain Bocquier, 10 days & 20 species including River Otter, Long-tailed Weasel and Bobcats
Costa Rica, 2012: Sarah & Andy Young, 2 weeks & 27 species including Olingo and Honduran White Bats.
Jon
