Camera trap pics from Big Pine Key

All summer I’ve been camera-trapping here on Big Pine. Here are some cool images from the last round!

Key deer doe

Virginia opossum (considered invasive)



Keys raccoon

Key deer doe

Two mice or rats of unidentified species… hanging out together. I’m not sure what they are, but I do have an idea of what they’re doing!

Key deer buck

House cat

Keys raccoon



Green iguana



The bane of a camera trapper. Vegetation blowing in the breeze.

Key deer doe and fawn

Curious fawn

Keys raccoon

Green iguana

Flying squirrel...in action!

I can't take credit for this AMAZING picture, but when I saw it posted on the NYS Conservationist Magazine Facebook page, I knew I had to share it with fellow bloggers and readers. If you've been a reader for any amount of time, you'll know that I love me some flying squirrels. They're unique, resourceful and darn cute. I know, I know...they're pests and get into all sorts of trouble. I have some in my roof, I know they're annoying. BUT they're super cool regardless.

To read my other flying squirrel entries, click HERE!

About a week or so ago (late October), I saw this picture posted on the Conservationist's FB page:

Photo credit: Michael J. Morsch, Sr.

 

Like I said, I really wanted to share it...but needed to get permission from the person who submitted it. I wrote an email to the Conservationist, and they forwarded my email on, and Mr. Morsch of Speonk, Long Island, New York wrote back. So yes, flying squirrels really are EVERYWHERE :) !!!

Mr. Morsch shared with me that he had this Cuddeback Capture IR camera set about 3 feet off the ground, and was quite surprised to see this image show up! I'll say it again: flying squirrels do not fly. Confusing, I know, but they glide rather. That large membrane of skin you can see between wrists and ankles is called the petagium, and that allows the squirrel to catch air and glide from tree to tree. I've seen this several times, and it never ceases to amaze me. Because the squirrels can't fly, they tend to lose altitude from the lauch site to the land site. So, this squirrel looks like it landed right ON the camera, from probably high above an adjacent tree. Imagine if this was a flash camera? That would have scared the bejesus out of this little one!

Thanks Morsch family for letting me share your awesome catch!

Camera trapping at its finest!

Last week I received my 5 Cuddeback Attack IR cameras that I will be using this spring for my research project at the Muller Field Station in Honeoye, NY. In this past entry: Research Methods in Biology and in this entry: So Very Thankful I outline my plans. After the hard work of detailing and outlining my project, and the anxiety of waiting to hear if it would be approved...I WAS approved and I received funding to buy materials. This past week I participated in a Winter Ecology residential course at the same field station, and my classmates and I put the cameras to the test. Below are the best results!

Red fox

Tori the Yeti

Mink

Clinton "Critter" Krager-kins

White-tailed deer

My FIRST flying squirrel 'trapped' on camera!

Beaver

Red squirrel (another first!!!)

Gray squirrel

Classmates of mine: Adriel and Anthony (aka Boy and Tiger)

I purposefully did not pick out the critter in this picture...if you can pick it out, I'll be amazed! It took alot of conferring and we blew the picture up on a projector to pick it out!

Mouse species...probably deer or white-footed

Eastern cottontail

And to follow up...some videos! We had an AWESOME and productive week!

And that's all I write today! I know 2 posts in one day! I have a LOT to catch up on though...I hope you enjoy the pictures and video! What's your favorite critter above??? Mine is either the flyer or the mink!

Camera trap pics from the FLCC woodlot!

I know I said my next blog post would be about muskrats :)...but the club that I am a member of (The Wildlife Society!!!) deployed some cameras on our campus a week ago, and today we went out and collected them and viewed the pictures as our last "meeting" of the semester. The following are the highlights of what we collected!

Eastern gray squirrel

 Red fox

 White-tailed deer

 2 Eastern gray squirrels

 Eastern cottontail

 Red fox

 White-tailed deer

Eastern cottontail

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!

Camera Trapping over Thanksgiving Break: Part I

Howdy!

As student, one of the best times of the semester is a holiday break. I love school in general- awesome faculty and staff, classes are interesting, have great friends...but this semester is burning me at both ends. So today, day #1 of Thanksgiving break, finds me on the couch watching trash daytime TV, and loving it. I do have some baking and pre-holiday shopping to do, but that can wait.

One of my favorite newest hobbies is camera trapping or using game/trail cameras. It's a great passive hobby, because you literally can just "set it and forget it", not to spin off an 'As Seen On TV' gimick. But that's literally all you do! The longer you 'forget' your camera in the field, the more exciting the results. I typically check my cameras every week, and that's just because I literally can not wait to see what wildlife has walked in front of my camera.

I personally own one camera, a Moultrie Game D-50 Digital Trail Camera Flash (under $100). This was a gift last Christmas, and although a great first camera for a novice, I've learned alot about these cameras in the past year, and it's not my favorite. The conservation department at FLCC has a collection of cameras that I have access to using, and their brand is the Cuddeback. They have both the Capture (Flash and IR), and newest model, the Attack (IR). I've used the Capture model extensively and enjoy it because it's easy to use, yields great pictures, and is cheap (under $200). The newest model the school has purchased through a National Science Foundation grant, is the Attack IR. This is a very similar model to the Capture, the only first-glance, noticeable differences are the mode of mount, and that it is capable of interchangeably taking video and still images. With many other models, it's only one or the other, although my Moultrie does this as well, but the quality is VERY poor compared to the Attack.

ANYWAY, the point of this post is not to review cameras. For this week I have my Moultrie (Flash), Capture (Flash), and one Attack (IR) to play with. The first two cameras are set at FLCC's East Hill Campus in Naples. I intern there weekly, and know the property well. I was there yesterday, and set the cameras.

Cuddeback Capture Flash, complete with camouflaging bird poop.

Moultrie Game Spy Flash

I have the third camera, Attack, which I plan on setting when I go to my Aunt and Uncle's house in Baldwinsville later this week, just overnight. My Uncle Mark is an outdoorsmen, and I'm sure will be interested to play with the camera. They have quite alot of land behind their house, and hopefully will be able to get something cool

Cuddeback Attack IR

To heighten my chances of "capturing" or "trapping" wildlife on the cameras, I recently purchased several scent lures from Kishels Scents. I use a lure for weasel, carnivores (fox, coyote), and an acorn oil intended for deer and bear.



Weasel lure: On a scale of 1-10 of stinkiness, I'd give it a 7.

Acorn oil: Sweet smelling, similar to maple syrup.

Crossbreed: VILE odor. 11 on a scale of 1-10. Lingers if you get it on you (which I always do.)

So far, I've not had MUCH luck. On my Moultrie, in one session of the camera being out for 2 weeks, I lured in striped skunk, opossum, gray squirrel, white-tail, and raccoon. This was the most successful session I've had yet with that Moultrie, I was impressed. Unfortunately, due to technical, aka: user diffifculty, I lost the pictures and video before I could save them.

But I feel like I'm wasting the lures, literally just dumping them on the ground. At $5.50/oz I want to maximize the lures. Should I be mixing the scent with something? I've heard the use of petroleum jelly to help it 'stick'. Due to Murphy's Law, it seems like within 24 hours of me setting the cameras, it pours or snows. Anyone have any advice out there?

Next week, I will post my results, if any. Here's to hoping!

In the mean time, here is a picture caught on a Capture at the East Hill Campus last year.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!