Scaling

This blog post is for two trips to the swamp. I've been busy and haven't had much time to write my blog recently.

The first trip i'm going to talk about was just like any other. We were going to pick up one of our camera traps and deploy two more. We put our boat in the water and started paddling down the bayou, saying hello to a fisherman. Once we came to a bend in the bayou we stopped to plant one of our cameras. We hiked in a little and set it facing a lot of trees on a tripod. We had already tried to set up the camera in that area once, but we focused it wrong and all the pictures were blurry. We made sure the focus was correct and then headed down the bayou again.

We then came to where our camera was set up farther down the bayou, facing a Cypress from the opposite side of the bayou. We had had a camera there for several weeks. Before we picked it up I suggested we hike farther into the forest. We hiked past a few big Live Oaks and then through a patch a cane. Then the forest became drier and the foliage thicker. We had hiked back pretty far when I looked over to my left and saw an awesome scaled tree!

The tree had patches of bark cleanly stripped away on one side. It was very recently dead, the bark very tight. I was amazed. I wanted to get some pictures and also plant our second camera facing the scaled tree, but our bag of gear was back with the boat. I didn't want to lose the tree, so I stayed with it while my dad went and got the bag. He came back through the trees several minutes later, looking confused, and apparently didn't see me. I waved and called at him, but it took him a minute to finally see me, (he can't hear well). I got the digital camera and went to take a picture, but "internal memory full!" flashed on the screen! I looked and no memory card was in the slot. But, we planted our camera trap, and then headed back out.

On our way out we heard gunshots, and as we moved nearer to the parking area they got louder. We didn't think it was hunting season yet. The shots got very loud, and we started to get nervous as we apporched the bank. As we came up the bank with our boat we saw a target shooter-in the parking area, shooting at a pile of gravel. He had been shooting almost in our direction. As we drove out, the idiot didn't even look our way. Funny, there's a shooting range to the north of the park...

-The Next Week-

This time in the bayou we were just wanting to pick up our two cameras and plant one on the scaled tree again. We're going to keep it under our watch until we find out what's doing it. We headed down the bayou and ran into the same fisherman we saw last time, cutting a fish into filets. We said hello to him again and then we picked up our first camera on the tripod. We then headed off to the scaled tree.

We then arrived back at the cypress tree that marked where we hiked in from the bayou to find the scaled tree. So we hiked in, passing the Live Oaks and cane. Then we fanned out in the forest to look for the tree again. A short while later we spotted it. This time I had a camera with a memory card, so I took some really good pictures of the scaled bark. We picked up our camera from last week and started to plant a new one. We used our picked-up tripod to mount a new camera trap facing the tree and then turned it on. Then we headed out of the bayou.

Our pictures from the camera traps did not reveal the culprit of the scaled bark from the first deployment, but I posted two below. I also posted a picture I took of the scaling with my digital camera. It's interesting to note one area of the scaling is darker than the other, indicating whatever did it did it two different times. Maybe next week we'll have a picture of an IBWO sitting on the tree peeling off more bark.