Hello folks and welcome to the blog,
My name is Mario
Castellanos and I live in the urban jungle known to most as Washington DC. I am particularly interested in learning about urban wildlife that coexist in the fragmented landscape of developed areas. By the way, I am biologist by training and a west coast transplant from the central coast (Lompoc) of California. I attribute my love of the outdoors to my family with whom I spent a lot of time exploring the tide pools of the Pacific coast and the chaparral and live-oak communities of Santa Barbara county. My current professional career allows me to work with youth and share the wonderful world of ecology and conservation biology with them. In fact, it was through my job that I decided to tinker with the idea of a blog that could feature an inventory of animals within the metro park of Rock Creek.
Back in 1999, I first became interested in camera trapping after a colleague shared a wonderful PowerPoint presentation featuring the elusive ocelot cat of
Laguna Atascosa NWR. The wildlife refuge is located in south Texas near the city of Brownsville. My friend, who had grown up in the Rio
Grande Valley (
RGV), had done some camera trapping at the wildlife refuge back in the mid-90's while pursuing his graduate degree. Though the camera trapping technique blew my socks off, it seemed somewhat cumbersome. I thought to myself, who has the time and financial resources to manage the complex amount of supplies, from the number of cameras, to the tripods, slave flash units, PC cables, and of course don't forget the chickens (don't ask). My primary concern was the sheer volume of film it would take to be successful in gathering a couple of images of animals, as I still have a fair number of film canisters stuffed in a shoe box, since 1991 (I am sure the images are still good, right?).
So I put off the idea of camera trapping for a while. Low and behold 7 years later technology has caught up with my frugality. The recent advances in digital image technology have revolutionized camera trapping. Today for a relatively inexpensive start-up cost ($400 per camera plus batteries) one can scatter a number of cameras out in nature and passively record "a tree falling in the woods".
About a year ago, a young man set up an internship with me through "
Kramerica." He had heard the National Park Service had recorded coyote (
Canis latrans) in the northern portion of the park in 2004
http://www.nps.gov/rocr/naturescience/coyotefaq.htm and was interested in finding out if coyotes were in the southern portion of Rock Creek Park, near the Adams Morgan community. So we set out with camera traps (
flashless passive infra-red) in hand, to document the various species of animals that live in-and-around Rock Creek park.
Here are a couple images of mammals.
A raccoon who was a bit camera shy!
A white-tailed deer in a hurry to get to Adams-Morgan!
Whom might these piercing eyes belong too?
Look for the answer next time.
If you are interested in mid-Atlantic wildlife take a look at DCNature.com website, it features a number of images taken within the Capitol Beltway (http://dcnature.com/). In addition, if you like camera trapping images, take a look at Dr. Chris Wemmer's "Camera Trap Codger" blog (http://cameratrapcodger.blogspot.com/). Thanks Chris for the encouragement!
