Fisher In A Tree

 Juniper Hill is easily the area of Framingham where i've had the most large mammal sightings, Second being the pond next to Framingham High. Today, I was walking down a game trail that I knew was created by deer activity. I had just given up on following a Great Horned Owl that was being harassed by blue jays. I set a trail camera along the path, hoping for clips of bucks shedding velvet, and continued walking.

All of a sudden, a startled animal ran up a pine tree. It climbed maybe 20 feet up the trunk in under a second, and then disappeared to the other side of the tree. It ran up the bark like a squirrel, and immediate thought based on size was that it must have been a raccoon. I crouched and took out my camera. I didn't see anything. There was a maple branch with dense foliage in between myself and the animal. It took me a moment to notice that it was a fisher. Not a "fisher cat" because they are not in Felidae (cats) and instead in Mustelidae (otters, skunks, minks, weasels, wolverines, ferrets, martens, stoats, ermines, and badgers.) I have never seen a fisher this close in person. Once it stopped panting, it set itself down where the trunk split into two, and my auto focus started focusing on the fisher, rather than the maple leaves that were in the way. Every time the shutter noise went off, it grabbed the fishers attention.

I was so worried that it was about to dart further up the tree, or jump down and run off that I took like 50 identical, blurry photos of it's face. I was panicking to get as much footage and photos as I could, as fast as i could. I expected it to spook and climb out of site, but It didnt. After a few minutes of staring at me, it even yawned.

I used a rotting tree stump as a makeshift tripod, to reduce the shakiness I was getting in my hand held videos. Still shaky, but not terrible. The white noise in the background is of the nearby Highway (I-90)...

I snuck around the trunk in a big semi-circle, to get a different view. I guess the fisher wanted to keep close watch on me, because it had turned it's body around and was already staring at me again...

I plan to camera trap a few of the tree cavities I know of at Juniper Hill. One goal of mine is to get footage next spring of either a fisher or raccoon family. Right before I left, I moved the trail cam I had set up on the game trail so that it was facing the base of the tree the fisher was in. It wasn't tied to anything, but the location is far away from trails, so it wouldn't get stolen, and I propped it up against a rock. When I checked it 2 days later, I realized that the fisher had stayed in the tree until after dark, before climbing back down.

And a few hours later, a flying squirrel also climbed down the trunk, and ran into the ferns...

I did a post about 9 months ago, about a trail camera I setup on a deer skelaton: https://framinghamwildlifeblog.blogspot.com/2022/02/scavengers-at-deer-carcass-trail-cam.html

A fisher ended up visiting the carcass, and the carcass's location was very close to the tree i saw the fisher in today. I'm not completely sure, but that was probably the same fisher.