Some goofy raccoon videos

Roxane, the mother of a group of three extremely mischievous "teenagers" (likely more like four- to six-months old, but in that rebellous and naughty part of their lifecycle), is beginning to have about enough of their nonsense. 

🚨 New species: White-Breasted Nuthatch

TWO new species sightings today, in addition to the Virginia Opossum from early this morning, this one is of a teensy white-breasted nuthatch. Check out the video (our little dude is sitting on the log on the water bowl). Look closely: He stays pretty still until about the 16-second mark, so he's easy to miss. The second video is from about an hour later and he's easier to spot. 

Quick note on costs and cameras

Right now there are no plans on asking for donations but that may change if the project gets bigger or if we want to upgrade the equipment. 

The two cameras we are using now were relatively inexpensive (here is a link to the cameras, the price has varied but they typically cost about $70-80 each), and do the trick for ID'ing most critters. We may want to upgrade to nicer cameras at some point to 1) allow for live-streaming to this site, which in addition to requiring a fancier and pricier camera, also has substantially increased data costs and 2) improve the quality of the cameras. The cameras we have now are capable of 1080p "HD" but only when actively watching and recording live from a phone. The images captured by the cameras when no one is actively observing are of substantially lower quality and sometime lead to difficult IDs, especially for some smaller critters.  

The cameras use 4G data to stream, which also has some costs, although really not that much. It costs $14.99/month/camera for cellular data, and $3.99/month/camera for cloud storage of the videos. The total costs then for the two cameras together are about $40/month. If we add more cameras and/or switch to a different camera that costs more for streaming we may ask for people to help cover the costs. For now, though I think the costs are manageable. 

🚨P🚨O🚨S🚨S🚨U🚨M🚨

Check out the first sighting of a possum at this location in the video below! While not vulnerable overall, in DC possums are actually considered a species of concern, and are listed as a Tier 1 Species of Greatest Conservation Neeed in the 2015 DC State Wildlife Action Plan. Possums don't do well around cars,and vehicle collisions in the District mean their numbers are lower than they probably should be. The Virginia Opossum (or possum) is the only marsupial native to North America and is a super cool species! 

🦝 New Raccoon Family Group Spotted!

Early this morning a new family group of racoons meandered through the woods for the first time. We've been following another group with sightings almost every night. The group we know (in the video on the right below), composed of one mother (Roxane) and three youngsters (Rémy, Reba, and Ringo), has been around for awhile and the young ones are starting to get pretty big (and bother their mother lol). 

This new group, (in the two videos on the left below) which we've yet to name, is composed of one mother and FOUR babies that are much younger than the other group, probably born in the past month or two, I'm guessing. Raccoons usually give birth in the spring, from late March to May. This group was likely born a bit later than that, judging by their size in comparison to the first group. Time will tell if this new group is sticking around or just passing through. If they stay, the population of raccoons in this small patch of woods will more than double from four known residents to nine. 

In the past week or so there have been a couple of interactions that I thought were odd that now make more sense, where Roxane seemed to be acting very defensively toward what I thought at the time was one of her juvenile offspring but which may in fact have been the other mother as she first made her way into the woods.