AiDan's nature blog

December 31st, 2020 Framingham, MA

Last night, I mounted my camera on a tree about halfway down the big hill, at Juniper Hill. I put it there because I had seen Whitetail Deer there before on multiple occasions. Two of them were does, but I did see a buck. The only picture I have ever got of one is of one of the does, taken on June 30th, about six months ago.

But what I got might be even cooler... An Eastern Coyote.

Now, I got 26 pictures of it walking and sniffing around the pile of Ramen, Rice, and Chicken Flavor Powder. I am showing the best 10 photos, as some are blurry or almost exactly the same. 11 Photos in chronological order below.

Eastern Coyotes are also called "Coy-Wolves". This is because the Eastern Coyote is a hybrid between the Grey Wolf, and the Western Coyote. The Eastern Coyote is also a relatively recent thing, only being created (naturally) about 150 yrs ago.

The Eastern Coyote is better at living in human-dominated areas than Western Coyotes and Grey Wolves. Sadly, there are no remaining Grey Wolves in New England due to excessive hunting and habitat loss, but in a way, they still do. It's like how neanderthals don't exist anymore but, due to cross-breeding, they do in a way. The main difference is that grey wolves arent extinct, there just arent any near where I Live.

Eastern Coyotes also tend to have some domesticated dog DNA in them.

Overall, this a great post to wrap up 2020, as today is New Year's Eve, so have a great new years!

-Aidan Garrity

December 30th, 2020 Framingham, MA

This afternoon, the slime came in. Physarum Polycephalum. This is an organism that does not belong to animals, plants, fungi, or bacterium, though, it used to be classified as a fungus due to it's appearance and diet. I put a tab of it in a petri dish with a layer of oats at the bottom, as a food source to help it recover from a dry, cold, foodless, shipment. I ordered them at Carolina.com. They came in a package with 3 components, the samples came in a little black box, there was a pamphlet, and a little bag of oats.

I put one on a damp paper towel, and the other 3 in petri dishes with oats.

In doing this, the Physarums will eat the oats in their petri dishes, as they use the protein and carbs to grow and gain energy, and the moisture to stay hydrated.

Physarums are Plasmodial slime molds, meaning they only have one plasma membrane wrapped around the entire blob, while they have organelles like ribosomes and nuclei floating around inside them. This means that while it is technically one cell, it can act like a population of animals: Split it in half, no difference, both sides will instantly be their own organism.

Physarums have thin veins connecting all of it's parts, and transporting water, nutrients, and oxygen. They transport these substances at an average of 2 inches per hour.

I am keeping all three of the petri dishes in a dark shoe box, as Physarums and most other fungus grows best and stays most healthy in the dark.

This afternoon, I am leaving the Trail Camera at Juniper hill. Hopefully I'll get a deer.

-Aidan Garrity

December 29th, 2020 Framingham, MA

Today, I was at nobscot to retrieve the camera and I thought I would write about some of the cool fungi I saw there yesterday. I saw a bunch of Yellow Fairy Cups (Bisporella Citrina) Growing on a rotting White Pine stump. They blanketed the entire thing, and it was a really cool thing to see, especially close up...

I also saw Turkey Tail Fungus growing on some birch wood. Many other fungus's look very similar to turkey tail like false turkey tail and crowded parchment. Photos below.

I woke up this morning in suspense, waiting to see what I got on camera. at around noon, I went out to Nobscot Scout Reservation. With it now being officially winter, There was still some snow mounds from the storm, the Vernal Pool was frozen over, and it was really cold. The camera is designed, however to withstand extremely low temperatures because it is well insulated by layers of plastic.

Animals would be motivated to get in the view of the camera because I poured some oats there, so animals should go sniffing around or eating them in front of the camera. The animals are also desperate for food right now because it is winter and food is scarce, let alone a pile of starch loaded oats.

I saw something in the first picture. I figured it was just a Beryl or a round tree stump as it was touching the tree and showed up in a similar color to the tree, but it moved in between pictures. There were four photos of the moving Beryl.

I thought it was either a raccoon, opossum, beaver, or porcupine. When I got home, and transferred the photos to my mom's Mac, I could easily see from it's banded tail that it was indeed a raccoon. I will blow up the image, so you can see for yourself.

It is amazing to see that at 7:15 in the morning, it is still so dark out that the camera switches into night vision (infrared light). The raccoon was active just minutes before the sun rose. I find it weird to think that if I had decided to go out to that place at seven fifteen, I would have seen a raccoon. That's why I love my new Trail Cam: Because i can not spend 12 hours standing perfectly still, waiting in the woods.

This is also a good thing because raccoons are primarily nocturnal, so I would stand a very low chance of running into them along my early afternoon hikes.

I am very satisfied, that I can get such cool footage on only the second night that the camera is active. Getting four relatively good pictures is good too, because I can quickly punch the left arrow key three times, and see almost like an animation of the raccoon walking across the ground.

The raccoon looks fat, and it IS but, a lot of the raccoon's rounded shape is due to the extra hair they grow for the winter, to insulate themselves better.

-Aidan Garrity

December 28th, 2020 Framingham, MA

It worked. I opened the camera at around 11 o'clock this morning, and there were plenty of pictures. I was quickly disappointed to see, though, that all i got was crap. The camera took like 5 pictures of me walking away from the camera after setting it. It also took several pictures of the light from our windows disappearing at night, as we switched them off, and a couple of our neighbor's motion activated lights switching on, and off, because one of them stepped outside to grab something.

I did, However get one picture with a mystery bird in it (Above). The little thing flew just slow enough to activate the camera. The picture was taken at 7:03, Which makes sense as birds are very active early in the morning.

The bird is just underneath the bush to the left of the porch stairs. You can recognize it's feathery wings to prove that it is not a rodent or bat.

I am also placing the camera at Nobscot Scout Reservation, in a patch of woods to the left of the vernal pool, near the cranberries. I will see what I got tomorrow.

-Aidan Garrity

December 27th, 2020 Framingham, MA

Today, I have the SD card and batteries at Best Buy (Finally) so I tried to set it in the forest behind Juniper Hill School.

I turned it on and let it count down...

After counting down from 30 it just said "Please insert memory card." that did not make sense to me, because the SD Card was clearly in. After a lot of frustration, I tried putting the card back in sideways, backwards, and rotated. I tried pushing it in really hard, I tried doing it really carefully, but in the end, I went home with the camera, card, and strap.

When i got home, i figured it out. There was a second smaller card that I needed to insert into the SD Card. After doing that, I strapped it onto the White pine in my backyard, as a test. I will do an update tomorrow when i review the pictures.

-Aidan Garrity

December 26th, 2020 Framingham, MA

There is a second pandemic, not just Corona Virus.

Red-Leg syndrome.

Red-Leg syndrome is a bacterial infection that targets fish and amphibians. About a week ago, My largest female newt died of it. It is not a respiratory illness like COVID-19, but instead infects the skin and genitalia of the animal.

Also, on Christmas eve, my smallest male died. they both just turned reddish and would loose wait, and eventually die. I am really worried that it will spread and kill my 6 remaining newts.

If I can keep them alive until the spring, I will release them back into the vernal pool.

-Aidan Garrity

December 21st - December 25th