Crash Pad Nature Report
We are not alone
I started adding the wildlife comings and goings to the newsletter I am working on, but it is starting to be too much for the newsletter! So I thought I would do a little micro story on the Spring/Summer wildlife happenings at the Crash Pad.
Bears
We are very aware there are bears here, but in the years we have been coming up here we have never seen as many as we have seen this year. So far between us we have seen about 11 bears!
The first sighting of the year was just around the bend at Lake Helane right after we took this picture. It was a heart thumper and as we discussed turning around (and having to go up a big hill we had just come down), we met our neighbor Nancy (who we had not met before). The three of us decided to ride on, making noise as we rode past where we had seen the bear.
During the Hungry Bear event, many people were commenting on the bears they saw, and unfortunately that morning some of our neighbors lost a chicken to a bear intruder.
Speaking of the Hungry Bear, as I was waiting at the end of our driveway to get picked up to do the rest of the event with our neighbor, I looked towards my neighbors driveway while I was waiting and saw a big ol’ bear rump headed in the direction of our neighbors house, and therefore the Crash Pad, just feet from where I was standing. PANIC! I decided to remain where I was since it seemed to be headed away from me, and the event cyclists were starting to ride by, but whoa…..!!
And just a few days ago (it is July 3 as I type), Kurt was in the middle of a climb on a gravel ride and came around a corner and BAM ~ BEAR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD! He pulled hard on his breaks, which are disc breaks so they squealed, luckily scaring the bear and it ran off into the woods. The bear was about 20 feet away from Kurt. I got a text right after:
And then there is the bear who walked right in front of our living room windows while we were watching a movie! It was one of those moments where I could barely operate my camera, so these are the images I got:
It has been a busy bear season in this area! We appreciate nature and bears, but just don’t want to be too close, and definitely don’t want the dogs to encounter one!
Eastern Phoebe’s
Then there have been the Eastern Phoebe’s who decided to build a nest on top of two 2 x 6’s we had leaning against the wall in the porch. We had planned to work on finishing the siding in this area, but work had to stop ~ there were eggs in the nest.
By the end of June the babies had hatched and flown away. So Kurt decided it was time to remove the nest. Sadly, he noticed too late there was a new batch of eggs in the nest. Sorry Phoebe’s!
Robin’s
We had hoped after the Phoebe’s had hatched we could have the porch back for construction tasks, but unfortunately that has not been the case. In Mid-June Kurt arrived to find a nest of vibrant blue eggs on the porch.
We had hoped by our next trip up they would have hatched and flown away. Instead, on June 30th Kurt arrived to find this:
Unfortunately the nest spot chosen was not ideal, this is the dog ramp we have to get the dogs in and out of the Jeep. We leave it on the porch, which apparently looked like a great place to build a nest! It’s not ~ it is only about 1 1/2 feet off the ground! There are a lot of critters here, so we are silently cheering this family on hoping they make it to fledge without interference.
I have been sipping my morning coffee while watching the babies grow and constantly be fed. Both the mom and dad have been actively watching and feeding the babies.
Fisher Cats & Coyote’s
This was interesting footage from the back of our property in February. We believe the first animal is a fisher cat and then a coyote after that.
This footage is from the trailcam at the back of our property where there is very active wildlife evidenced in the footage we catch and the well worn game trails. We debated if this was a wolf or coyote, but landed on coyote after googling images.
Wolves & Foxes
But there are definitely wolves on this property! The one thing we really worry about seeing is wolves, because of the dogs. We have heard stories from people in the area who have lost their dogs to wolf attacks, so are very aware when we are outside with the dogs. We know they are on our property because we have seen them on our trail cams several times, and have also heard them.
Is this a wolf or a coyote? Kurt leans towards coyote because of the ears (as with the above footage). I can’t find the wolf footage unfortunately.
Unfortunately I don’t have the fox footage any longer, but it was eye opening to see it so close to the Crash Pad.
Deer
And of course there are the deer, which we frequently see on our property. I don’t have any recent pictures ~ but Kurt saw a mom and her two fawns out the kitchen window recently. Here is a trail cam video of momma and baby on our property from last year instead:
Mice
Luckily I don’t have any footage of this, but we know there is an abundance of mice on our property. We have had a pile of siding for our front porch sitting on our screen porch area for a year and know it was a mouse haven from the get-go.
And we have a pile of debris that we plan to load to the dump this week. If it is anything like the piles we got rid of last year, we know we will be disturbing abundant mouse housing.
But that is not all! City mice have come up to the the Crash Pad with me! A month ago on my drive up here, 15 minutes from the cabin I felt something on my ankle I thought was my shoe lace. NOPE ~ gulp, turns out it was a mouse who decided to run up my thigh while I was driving! I immediately stopped the car (going up the hill under the Birkie bridge out of Hayward if you know the area). It was me and the dogs. I hopped out of the car hoping the mouse would follow, but it was nowhere to be seen! My only choice was to drive the last 15 minutes to the cabin ~ at 70 miles an hour (not kidding, someone let me go by and flipped me off. They had NO IDEA what was going on in my car).
Kurt arrived that night and the next day super sleuth Inge got her nose on the mouse. I tried to run it into the woods, but it just came back. Kurt thought it was a baby mouse and said it was definitely a city mouse, not one of the country mice, so had been in the car with me from home. As it was trying to make it’s way back to the car I told Kurt the only option sadly was to kill it, which eventually he did.
Fast forward a month later, a mouse nest was found in the car along with a dead mouse by the driver’s pedal, and a live one found the next day in the car bay at the service station! Plus I’ve killed multiple mice in the garage! I’ve also had the car detailed to get rid of the smell.
People have told me I need to sell the car or take it out in a field and burn it. I agree, but our finances don’t. So I am hoping no more mice (city or country) decide to take up residence in our vehicles. But country mice are tenacious, so when we remove the debris pile I’ll be parking my car over at the neighbor’s house!
Everything seems abundant this year after a mild winter and a very rainy summer, both at the Crash Pad and at home! We just hope we don’t arrive to the Crash Pad at some point to find a bear sleeping on our porch.
Kurt has mentioned several times it might be a good idea to screen in the front porch because of mosquitos. We are starting to think screening the porch to prevent it from being a future nature reserve might be a good idea as well!