Out of Commission

One of the fun things about the remote cameras is how immediate they are. That is, you check the CF card and "just last week," or even a few hours ago, an animal has been recorded going about its daily, or nightly, business.

Well, I'm sorry to report that the camera I've been using is out of commission. It hadn't been functioning very well over the last couple of months -- shooting through a lot of pictures with "nothing" in them. I think I mentioned that the recent tapir series was just plain lucky -- out of 8000 "nothing" images, fortunately this magnificent animal was in a few of them.

We had some correspondence with the camera company, tried some troubleshooting, and bottom line, we have to send it back for repair. This might be a trivial task if you are based in, say, North America. Here though with the slower postal system (and not to malign anyone, it is a very reliable postal system), and the inevitable customs, duty, and importation bureaucracy, this is going to take some time.

Fortunately, the Chan Chich cameras are still operating, so we'll just concentrate on them in the meantime. And, for your viewing pleasure, above is a female ocelot from July, near Chan Chich Lodge.

Twice an Ocelot

Thanks to Ben at Chan Chich Lodge, we have this nice sequence of a female ocelot. Actually, if you look carefully, you can see that this is actually two sequences about 40 minutes apart on the Bajo Trail. I'm guessing it is the same individual passing back through the same location. As you may have noticed in other images, the scrotum on a male cat is normally easily visible, especially in profile. No such thing here as well as the lighter, sleeker build make this a female.

Mid-May Ocelots

It's been a bit of a dry spell between camera trap photos. The camera I've been using has been in for cleaning and repairs recently (it's been doing things like shooting 1700+ images of "nothing" in 1 hour) but it's now back in service. Luckily Ben came through with this nice pair of mid-May ocelot photos from Chan Chich Lodge, the Bajo Trail.

One was shot on May 13 and the other on May 16. It's not entirely straightforward to compare the two images but from what I can tell by zooming in, this is not the same individual. The ocelot in profile (lower picture) is certainly a familiar-looking male often photographed in this Bajo Trail intersection near the Lodge.

Lots of Ocelots

From a photographic perspective, it's a shame ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) are so nocturnal. Since they are active at night, it means the remote camera kicks over to infra-red so they appear in black-and-white. That doesn't do justice to its lovely buffy-golden color. In the hundreds of ocelot images taken over many years of camera trapping, I think I have had "day time" ocelots only on three occasions.

The images above were taken over two nights in March on the far Punta de Cacao road, about 15 km east of the farm on the Gallon Jug Estate property. It is a densely forested area seldom visited by people, only because it is not accessible most times of the year due to muddy conditions or treefall.

Besides a spotted pattern, ocelots also feature distinctive striping on the shoulders. In this sequence one individual is fairly distinctive due to the stripe on its left side. Watch the sequence carefully for the frame of two ocelots together.