Crow’s Nest: The wildlife camera

Posted by Daniel Barringer, Preserve Manager

We’ve set up a motion-sensing camera in the woods here for a few months, and I am gradually getting better at how to deploy it. I’ve had to keep lowering it, as most of our wildlife lives at a lower height than my expectations. These photos, from January, are the first that show more than deer.

We started seeing raccoons on the photos, sometimes more than one at a time. Still too high for them.

A fox leaping.

A deer in the snow. I was surprised that there were any photos of January that were not under snow, but indeed, there were. (However, that time included a period of bitter low temperatures.)

Hello from the Canada geese…

And from a deer (look carefully):

Lots of the photos look like this, taken in the wee hours of the morning.

And the fox again.

There is no doubt that the animals can see the infrared flash. You and I might not see it, but in many photos the animals are investigating the camera. It takes just four photos at a time and shuts off for a period. But there are several photos like this:

And finally, starlings massing set off the camera in November.