Crow’s Nest: A year’s view from the trail camera

By Daniel Barringer, Preserve Manager.

I left our trail camera out for a whole year—an act my friends say takes great self-control but really I just didn’t have time to get around to checking it. Amazingly the batteries were still fine and the chip was not full. It was in the same location it had been placed for the previous nine months; unfortunately the vegetation growing up around it set off the shutter when it blew in the wind, so there were 6,700 photos to review. I ended up keeping 700 and they reveal a range of animal behaviors.

I’ve chosen my favorites here, including fox, turkey, deer, female pheasant, and a domestic cat we’ve seen wandering the woods.

I’ll note here that domestic cats do not belong in natural areas; their presence introduces a “novel” predator to a community that is not adapted to them and wildlife suffers as a result. The effects are not limited to the preyed-upon species but to any of the other animals or plants that are affected by the cat’s competition for resources or the loss of the preyed-upon species. (And I say this as a cat lover; we have just one house cat now and he brings us great joy.)

Interestingly the photo above and the one immediately below were taken on the same day. It was 60 degrees with snow on the ground so it melted fast.