June rests her head on a log - Aug 23, 2004No update tonight. We've both been pounding keyboards today. Enjoy the June Walk below!Duration: 25 hrs
Observer: S. Mansfield
The day started out clear and cool – blue skies with temps in the 50s. I located June at 9:18 AM in the cedar/black ash swamp between Trygg Road and the RR grade just south of the first clear-cut. She has made this area her home base lately. She was sitting when I arrived and readily came to me for the nuts and marshmallows. She then drank from a pool nearby and wandered to a bed. There were two established beds about 10 feet apart – she took one and I took the other. I am unsure whether she was in this bed when I found her initially. She rested and slept here for 9 hours and 31 minutes! She rose twice to defecate and twice we swapped beds. She seemed restless some of the time but did fall into deep sleep with breaths coming 8-9 per minute. During her REM sleep she made the motor-like comfort sounds again. I tried to catch it on video but failed. The sky clouded up during midday, and, though the temperature made it up into the lower 60s, I struggled to stay warm.
June sleeps soundly - Aug 23, 2004When she finally woke, she spent another half hour just resting and grooming before setting off to forage. She stopped soon to defecate. She ran off and I followed. She kept looking back then running a little ways – but soon settled in to search for ant pupae. She found some pupae among the stones along the RR grade – but she seemed nervous being on the RR grade and ran down into a swamp. She gorged herself on wild calla leaves – even taking some that had begun to yellow. Mostly she ate just the leaves but occasionally she would eat the stem as well. Three-leaf Solomon seal was abundant in this swamp and she fed heavily on it when she came upon a patch of ripe berries. She also fed on bunchberries.
She crossed the RR grade to the north stopping to feed briefly on ant pupae. There she fed on wild calla leaves and on cattail leaves. She drew the cattail leaves through her mouth then bit off the last foot or so to eat. It was getting dark and I needed a headlamp to continue entering data in my PDA. She seemed spooked by the headlamp and blew at me several times. I tried to only turn it on when needed but she finally ran off and I chose to head back for the RR grade and track her from there. She soon came back to the RR grade too and walked easterly along the northern side while I walked on the RR grade itself. She crossed in front of me and headed toward a feeding station along her usual path. My car was very close so I drove around and parked on Trygg Road near where I expected her to cross. She crossed Trygg Road where predicted at 8:59 PM – 8 minutes after she left the RR grade.
I monitored her from my car as she fed at one feeding station and then another. At 10:03 PM I found her signal back on the north side of the road and moving. I expected her to head for the field station so I drove there and waited. About 10:45 PM I realized I was mistaken so headed down the RR grade to locate her. I found her signal coming from the swamp where I had located her that morning. Her signal became very steady around 11:49 PM so I headed home for a few hours sleep. I was back monitoring her at 5:13 AM and found her signal still strong and steady. It began to vary at 5:41 AM and she began to move about in the swamp at 5:57AM. I monitored her signal until 10:28 AM and she was active within the swamp the whole time. I suspect she was feeding on wild calla leaves.
I returned the evening of August 24th to check on her location. She was active in the same swamp.
A total of 4 scats were collected – with the 4th scat containing one marker. It is possible I missed a scat during one of the times I briefly lost her.