December Deer

December is known for its deer, especially those cloven hoofed, antlered critters, that feature in illustrations with old St. Nick and in the poem Twas the Night Before Christmas. Of course those are reindeer (called caribou in North America), but here much of December is known as the season to hunt deer, white-tailed deer specifically.

Don't try to capture those reindeer on a camera trap - they're magic and can't be caught on camera. But in December one of my camera traps on the hill above the house caught a fair number of white-tailed deer on video –

The videos show deer as their breeding season was tapering off, but the bucks are still looking for does that are receptive. If you look closely at their antlers, you’ll see that there are a number of different bucks in the videos: from young bucks that haven’t grown antlers to an impressive mature buck.

Two young bucks are seen sparring, one too young to have grown antlers this year. His sparring partner is about 18 months old, having been born in 2024. Young deer often engage in these sparring contests as a prelude to more serious contests in years to come.

Speaking of young deer, the video shows a six month old doe jumping and running in what can only be described as playing. Some people don’t think animals or birds play, but those of us who spend time watching other living creatures observe many of them playing.

Another young deer is seen following a mature buck. At first glance it appears to be a doe, but the pedicels from which antlers will grow next year indicate that this is a young buck, born last spring, following the older buck.

Once again the camera traps have videos of an injured deer. They live in rough terrain: steep and rocky with fallen trees and limbs, it’s not surprising that deer with leg injuries appear on camera with some regularity.

These deer live in an area that's too steep and rocky for all but the most energetic hunters, so most will survive until either a predator, injuries or old age bring their lives to an end.  

Season’s Greetings and a Happy 2026 to All.

 

Fall in the Fencerow

For a number of years one of my camera traps has been on a tree in a fencerow, so there have been previous posts of videos from the fencerow. Herewith are the videos taken from early-September through early-November. The fencerow is about 100 feet wide with trees of various sizes toward the middle bordered on each side by shrubs, primarily autumn olive that was introduced to the U.S. from Asia in the 1800s.

As you watch these video clips take note of the abundant low plants with white flowers. In early fall northcentral Pennsylvania, and much of the northeastern part of the continent, had a dry spell with little rain and those plants wilted. Later in the season as rainfall increased the plants responded and were less wilted.

That white-flowered plant is white snakeroot, an abundant native plant throughout most of eastern North America. White snakeroot is poisonous, containing the toxic chemical tremetol. White-tailed deer do not eat white snakeroot, but cattle, sheep and horses will eat the plant. In those domestic animals the tremetol is concentrated in their milk and meat.

In the early years of European settlement, when cattle were pastured in woodland, many people died from what was called milk sickness as a result of tremetol in milk. It is said that Abraham Lincoln’s mother died of milk sickness caused by tremetol.

Here are the video clips from the fencerow –

It was surprising that no eastern coyotes appeared in the videos, there are two other camera traps in the same general area that had multiple videos of those fascinating animals.

Getting Ready for Winter

The road is separated from a field by a row of large old trees, many of them with cavities – holes where birds like the white-breasted nuthatch nest and gray squirrels have a snug place to spend the winter. For a naturalist it’s always worthwhile to take a look at these cavities, you never know what might be there.

One of the white oaks along the road had a large horizontal limb where a branch had died, decayed and left a hole. A close look at that hole revealed leaves and hair hanging out.

In a matter of seconds a head emerged – a gray squirrel –

And then the rest of the young squirrel emerged, quickly followed by a second young one and both of them climbed atop the limb –

The second animal proceeded to bite its sibling repeatedly –

Meanwhile the adult female was gathering leaves and taking them into the hole to make a cozy nest for winter –

One of the young ones that hadn’t quite learned how to make a nest repeatedly tried to take a leafless twig into the cavity – but it wouldn’t fit –

Perhaps you noticed the wound on the adult squirrel, here’s a better photo; it looks like the biting offspring may have taken a hunk out of its mother –

A little further along another gray squirrel was peering from a hole in a contorted red oak –

It soon ran down the tree and over to a stonerow where the wind had made a pile of leaves; the squirrel proceeded to gather a mouthful of leaves –

Up the tree it went and into the cavity in the tree –

Leaves insulate a tree cavity quite well; on the coldest of winter days squirrels often don’t emerge from their cozy dens insulated with dry leaves.

Gray squirrels also build leaf nests high in trees if there aren't enough tree cavities available. Those leaf nests aren't a good place to spend cold winter nights so gray squirrels prefer cavities in trees; but they compete with flying squirrels, woodpeckers, nuthatches and other birds and mammals for any available cavities.  

In woodlands composed primarily of young trees there aren't enough cavities to go around, so it's wise to save any tree with a usable cavity; trees that are hollow from the ground up don't count. 

Each and Every Day of Fall …

… one or more of my cameras are used to make photographs of the natural world. Photographs that illustrate the mammals, birds, insects, plants or landscapes that are increasingly imperiled in the modern human-dominated world. 

This is the beginning of a new project to present one photograph taken each day for a year. In this project, as in earlier similar projects, the photos will be presented by seasonal quarters – fall, winter, spring and summer. These are the meteorological seasons (fall being the months of September, October and November) since they are more attuned to the natural world than the astronomical seasons that are in common use. 

Apparently due to the changing climate late summer and much of the fall were extremely dry. Leaf change was late and the colors were muted, seemingly due to the dry weather. Insects were extremely scarce and birds were hard to find as a result of the dry weather, habitat loss, pesticide use and the changing climate.

The natural world portrayed in these photographs is at risk from human activities both deliberate and incidental. Even common species can be put at risk, three examples: the introduced chestnut blight fungus killed up to four billion American chestnut trees throughout eastern North America in the last 100 years; the extinction of the passenger pigeon that was said to have numbered in the billions, lost to market hunters and habitat loss; and, more recently, the incipient elimination of all species of ash trees from the eastern part of the continent by the introduced emerald ash borer. 

Chestnut is now functionally extinct and the ash trees soon will be, only a handful of scattered living individual chestnut trees remain and the ashes are dying rapidly. The passenger pigeon is totally extinct – gone forever. These and many more species doomed at the hand of humans.  

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed viewing the photos and that they may inspire you to do whatever you can to protect the natural world on which we all depend whether we, or those in power, realize it or not.

From the camera traps: 9/12, 9/26