Pretty sure I mentioned, about a year ago, that I received a pair of trail cams for Christmas last year – ie two Christmases ago. Overall, I’m a tad disappointed in both the image quality and the critter quantity. It could very well be that I just haven’t deciphered the instructions correctly, but for some reason I thought that when something moved in front of the camera, the shutter would open and a pretty good quality image would be captured. You know, like when TV cops wear night vision goggles and they see everything so perfectly. But with my not-top-of-the-line cams not only are the images really grainy but there seems to be a major time lag in something crossing in front of the lens and the shutter actually opening.
As far as critter quantity – we frequently hear packs of coyotes, sometimes very close to the house, and I was hoping to get a few shots with multiple coyotes. No joy there, but here, joining Jim’s Garden Ruminations gang, are six nocturnal visitors caught in the garden over the past year.
Don’t see a time-stamp on the last photo, but looks like coyote has a gobble-leg. You would have been very surprised to see a grainy Heffalump!!😳🤣😃
LOL!
The camera still worked well! The deer remains the animal that was best captured, perhaps because it was the one that moved the least
Yes, you’re probably right.
Fun to try to capture the wildlife though.
Some of the ranch/hunting lease managers down here get fabulous images, but when I learned the cost of their setups, it made sense. Especially on huge hunting spreads, there’s a need to know what’s going on “out there.” That said, you can recognize the nature of the creatures patrolling your land, and that’s darned interesting. It would be fun to have one!
The best part about winter hiking is seeing the tracks and having a better idea of what else is walking the trails. Once we found tracks of a pheasant being followed by a fox. We followed a short ways until the pheasant apparently caught wind of the fox and we saw clearly where the wings hit the snow on takeoff and the tracks of the still hungry fox wandering off. I like the grainy images, makes it seem more like an old detective show.
The first time I spotted wing marks like that, in the snow, I had no idea what I was looking at. They can be so beautiful!
It’s interesting to see the variety of wildlife that visits your garden… and possibly aliens – that colour photo looks a bit Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
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Interesting shots, I agree with Fred, the deer is the best one, but the coyote is the most fascinating to me. I would love to see one in the wild.
Love seeing, and hearing, them – from a distance. Although they’re not generally known to go after adults I’m still skitish about getting too close!
I could use that coyote to catch the voles that have invaded part of my lawn at the Vestavia HIlls Corner Garden.
Ugh! We have them too…their burrowing patterns under the snow looks so weird…
Interesting. It’s good to know what is out there. Were you surprised by any of the visitors. I would love to have one as well. I have seen bobcats here and sometimes my dog refuses to go outside at night, sitting at the screen door, nose twitching. I wonder what is out there. There are coyotes and who knows what else.
I was expecting all these creatures, and hoping for something a bit more exotic…
Moose?
No – we’re a few hundred kms too south for moose, sadly.
I think I bought the same model. I eventually captured a grainy video of one our cats somehow squeezing under the cover I’d set up over some food for hedgehogs. I wish I was half as supple.
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My associates use such a camera to get pictures of cyclists who cut through a fence at the end of the road, but then do nothing with the pictures. If we were not so diplomatic, we might post the pictures on social media. A neighbor put a camera out to get pictures of someone who had vandalized a Memorial Tree at least twice, but then, no more vandalism occurred. The camera remains, but shows nothing interesting.