It seems that very little is documented about the courtship and mating behavior of northern raccoons (Procyon lotor) other than the fact that mating occurs in the spring. So, while I’m not 100% sure what is happening in the video below, it seems likely that these behaviors – posturing to each other, grooming, etc. – could be associated with courtship. Prior to April 14, I’d captured quite a few video clips of a solitary raccoon circling the perimeter of this…
Although most people are deep in a Christmas planning mode right now, we’ve just finished up a late fall pumpkin party in our backyard. What do you do with your old Halloween pumpkins? Typically we just toss them in our compost bin, but this year after cutting the pumpkin in half to expose the seeds inside, we set it out in our back woods and trained our trail camera on it to see who would come to partake. Over a…
Northern raccoons (Procyon lotor) are mainly nocturnal, so we seldom get to observe their antics outside of their exploits with residential trash cans. But I recently captured an entertaining scene of two young raccoons, called kits, chasing each other up and down a tree in a local tupelo swamp on my game camera. Females typically bare between 2 and 5 young, which are born blind and only lightly furred, although even in these first moments their “masks” are already visible….
I spend a lot of time in my yard, or at least a lot of time looking out the window at my yard – probably more than most people. But even so, there is so much time when I’m not able to observe the comings and goings of animals on my property. This is particularly true at night – when I’m asleep and many of our local mammals are more active. I can only watch for so much of the…
Thoughts of salt marsh wildlife typically evoke images of great blue herons, ospreys, hermit crabs and various species of fish. Seldom due people consider the mammals that inhabit a salt marsh, particularly during low tide when the exposed marsh platform and mud flats provide considerable opportunities for foraging, but many mammals do regularly utilize these habitats for foraging, including raccoons. Raccoons (Procyon lotor) are found everywhere in Massachusetts, except on Nantucket. Although we’re all familiar with raccoons’ reputation as masked…