Results from Thanksgiving Break, Part II

Back at it now, after a brief break....and we only have 3 weeks left in the semester here @ FLCC! Where has this semester gone?! I had a GREAT break from school. I was able to relax, do some baking, played with pets, hung out with family, and spent some time outdoors! It was a nice week off for sure.

If you're new to my blog, please refer back to this posting so you can be up to speed!

On Friday the 25th (HAPPY 16th BIRTHDAY TO LAUREN!), I went to Baldwinsville, NY to visit some extended family. I set out a Cuddeback Attack IR camera trap in my Aunt and Uncle's backyard, just off the mown grass in a thicket. I also used Kishel's Cross Breed scent lure to see if we could sweeten our chances of getting pictures of wildlife. We set it on Friday afternoon, and waited until Sunday morning to pull the camera and check the pictures. Below is a picture of my cousins Jake and Alex posing with the camera, very unexcitedly might I add....  :)

Here are our only two results:

Cousin Alex checking out the camera...or is that a Northeastern Yeti?

 

SUCCESS!

A coyote (Canis latrans) checking out the scent I laid down? Possibly, and hopefully. This is my first coyote captured on camera.

I'm not sure why we only got two pictures. After I set up the camera, the pet dogs that followed us back there both were checking out the scent and the camera. I assumed that they had tripped in. Also, I usually trip the cameras when I check them. There's no way around it...but not this time. We've been having some issues with a few of the cameras, so perhaps there's a trigger issue?

Onto the next. My other two cameras that I had set, a Moultrie D50 and a Cuddeback Capture, both flashes, are located at FLCC's East Hill Campus in Naples, NY. There were about 65 pictures on this camera, and they were all deer. I just picked a couple of the more interesting ones:

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL!

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

I love this picture. I'm not sure why it's blurry. Maybe it was foggy out that night? It's been quite unseasonally warm and humid here in the Finger Lakes. Another thought was maybe the deer were too close to the camera so it couldn't properly focus?

I've been told that the flash cameras can spook animals, and scare them off. I would assume most researchers using cameras to gather data use IR cameras. This session of pictures begs to differ though. The deer do not seem bothered in the least! Or maybe deer are just difficult to spook?

The next set of pictures are from my Moultrie D50. The camera was set in what we refer to as the "Deer Yard" at the East Hill Campus. It's a nice 2-3 acre glade of pine and spruce trees. There is no understory, so it's easy to maneuver between the trees, and I'm sure the trees provide a nice cover for animals to hang out under. I was expecting to just get deer, because that's all I ever seem to get at East Hill. On this camera, there were about 40 pictures. As you'll see in the below pictures, there is a tree line directly in front of the camera. Just beyond this tree line is the driveway, and for a camera that has trigger issues, the passing vehicles tripped the camera often! So, I just picked out the animal pictures:

Deer butt.

Raccoon (Procyon lotor), nice and fat...ready for winter to hit!

Red fox (Vulpes vulpes)

A domestic dog, looks like a hound of some kind. What's interestings about this picture is that there is only four minutes between the fox and the hound. Was the hound on the foxes trail?

So there are my results, I hope you enjoyed them. If you would like to see more camera trap pictures, you can view my photo album on Facebook: Camera Trap Pictures 2011-2012. 

Please keep reading, and leave a comment or a question if you have any!