Seems that summer is not the best time to trap these small carnivores! There's so much food in the forest that it's hard to entice our focal species into our make-shift burrows with bait. In particular, western spotted skunks are omnivorous and eat lots of berries in the summer. So, we've closed traps until the fall, and I'm back to checking cameras.
Here are a few of the berries I've been finding. Some make delicious snacks while out in the field, but some are very poisonous to humans. Red baneberry is one of these fruit and depends solely on birds to disperse their seeds.
