RJ writes:
I photographed this owl at 11pm tonight (Wed. Feb. 17) in my backyard near Lake Boon. Luckily he managed to sit still for a 6 second exposure.
From what I can gather, it’s an Eastern Screech Owl, Gray or Brown morph? (I’m no Ornithologist)
The rut is on, and SCT’s Fieldstone property is a great place to look for deer. Hiking at dusk, we’ll maximize our chances of encountering wildlife as we walk the one mile loop trail. Families welcome, but no dogs this time. Meet at the trailhead at the end of Fieldstone Dr at 3:45PM on Sunday, Dec 4. We will enter the woods promptly at 4PM. Bring a flashlight for the walk out, and plan to do a thorough tick check when you get home. Email Dan Foster at svt@easygps.com to register so you don’t get left behind.
This video shows some of the deer activity taking place at Fieldstone in November, 2011. Watch a mature buck leave his scent at a scrape, and see does and a lesser buck pass by and investigate. As usual, a fisher stops by to check out the camera as well.
I saw one deer the day I placed the camera at Fieldstone, and four deer and a red fox on the day I retrieved it.
Sudbury Valley Trustees has a small parcel of land between Elizabeth Brook and Rt. 117, across from Bose. Earlier this year, a deer was killed there (possibly hit by a car, or brought down by coyotes). This was a wet, humid location, and maggots stripped away the hide and remaining flesh within a week, finishing the job that coyotes had started. This video, taken over the following weeks, shows coyotes, raccoons, and a fisher visiting the bone pile left after the carcass had mostly been consumed.
These two white-tailed deer hide out deep in the dense woods at the Delaney Project in north-west Stow.
As the rut approaches, this bachelor group will disband, and it will be “every buck for himself”.
OARS is looking for volunteers to help pull invasive water chestnut from the Assabet River in Stow this Saturday morning, July 30th, and again on Tuesday evening. If you’d like to volunteer or can supply a canoe for the volunteers, visit:
http://www.oars3rivers.org/take-action/volunteer/plant-control
After getting tipped off about a road-killed deer at Sudbury Valley Trustees’ Herene Reservation in Stow, I placed a motion-sensing video camera near the carcass to see what animals came to investigate. This small fisher sniffed around at the bones before bounding up onto a log and out of sight.
For the past few weeks I’ve had a motion-sensing camera monitoring a muskrat carcass I found along a game trail at the Delaney Project. All sorts of animals stopped by to investigate the remains. In the video clip you’ll see a coyote, a family of four river otters, and raccoons with and without tails.
If you find a raccoon tail, please let me know so I can return it to its rightful owner. 
