Dispatches from Cyberspace

One of the several citizen science projects I volunteer for is the Seattle Urban Carnivore Project. One of its components is the placement of motion-activated trail cameras in and around the city to gather data about the presence of target species. (Non-carnivorous species are also recorded.) I started volunteering in part to learn how such data collection protocols work; I have cameras on my own land in Thurston County, which have recorded a number of different species, some of them domestic, and including at one point some rather startled late-night hikers.

The team I’m with currently is assigned to a camera is right next to the Green River. As you may have heard (if you’re a PNWer anyway, though I think there was some broader news coverage), we had some flooding here recently. River valleys were especially affected; while some of them do flood regularly, a combination of warmer than usual temperatures and atmospheric rivers flowing in from the Pacific Ocean made for much higher water than we typically see. A few levees, including one along the Green River, were breached.

Flooding doesn’t just displace humans, or just alter human behavior. Accordingly, when my group got ready for our January camera check, we had two major questions: one, would the camera still be functioning, or did the floodwaters reach it and render it inoperable? And two, what interesting or unusual animals might we see, if the camera had survived?

I can’t share any images because of the project specifications, but I can tell you that the camera did survive; judging by the images we retrieved, the water didn’t get quite high enough to flood it. Entirely separate from what showed up on the SD card, though, I took advantage of the large volume of sediment left behind as the floodwaters receded to do some tracking.

“Didn’t there used to be a tree there?” one of the other group members asked, and indeed, there was clear sign of beaver work:



That there should be beavers on the river wasn’t too surprising, but it was the first time I’d seen sign from them at our camera’s location. They did some work on another, larger tree as well:



More exciting was down nearer to the water, which was still running a bit high but much closer to its usual level than in previous weeks. The receding of the flood had left behind smooth washes of sediment on ground previously thick with English ivy: a perfect track trap. While my teammates investigated the camera and filled out the data sheet, I investigated the ground. Top find: otter tracks!



I don’t have photos of them, but there were also raccoon prints, and one very nice coyote track. Most of the tracks were at least a little washed out, which can complicate identification. In the case of these otter tracks, all that’s really clearly visible are the tips of the toes. A few look more like raccoon tracks, and I couldn’t swear to you that they aren’t; they can look similar, and at some point I’ll share about the trail I followed last fall that kept changing species ID until I finally reached a definitive conclusion.