Moving the Cam

We’ve been getting pictures of the same deer and the same raccoons around here, so we decided to take one of our trail cams and try it out on some of the roads we walk on.  We picked spots where we see tracks of other animals.  Mainly deer, wolves and bobcats.  So far we’ve been happy with the pictures.
 

Night and day pictures of wolves.A bobcat and another wolf at a different spot.

And from yet another location, a small bear (not the best picture) and two different bucks.

Look at the strange set of antlers on this one.

At the cabin, it’s always nice to see the little doe and her fawns come by.  The dots are slowly fading away on little Spottie and Dottie.

And it wouldn’t be right to leave out the raccoon family.  They don’t have names, because I don’t like them and wish they’d find another place to hang out.

Around the Trail Cams

We haven’t been seeing many critters around here except for deer and raccoons.  So a couple weeks ago we decided to put Jenny/Kenny out by the field trail cam.  She stood there when other deer came by. She never budged when the squirrel was running around by her.She even stood like a statue when the hay cutter went past her… in both directions!And then two horrible events happened. 

1.  The trail cam’s batteries died.

2.  Jenny/Kenny was assaulted!Probably a bear out on the prowl.  Jim was able to put Jenny/Kenny back together again and…  I reloaded the cam with batteries and reset the time and date.  We’ve probably missed all the action, but you never know what will be lurking out there. 

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Here’s a great trail cam picture from yesterday.  I wished they didn’t pass so close to the camera, but it was exciting to see two fawns at once.  Look at those dots!

We may be onto something here

The other night Jim put the water jugs in the feeders again.  Mr. Coon came along, climbed the little tree, saw the jug and moved on.  

 

 

Lots of rain in the forecast this week, so we decided to come home for a few days, but we’ll be back by the end of the week.

Caught in the Act

No surprise in catching the raccoon in the feeder.  We didn’t know he used the faux tree to gain access, but we do now.  Notice the coffee cans in each feeder.

Now it’s on the ground, but it wasn’t enough to stop Mr. Coon from eating the sunflower seeds.

So now we have to decide if we want to leave the faux tree there for the birds or take it down to keep Mr. Coon from raiding the feeder.  Most likely it will stay.

Sooner or Later…

It had to happen.  Yes, we saw our first snowflakes of the season on Wednesday.  Nothing serious, compared to the wind and rain that pounded the country this week.  It’s been ugly here for days.  Today is the first day since Saturday that it hasn’t rained.  It’s cool and windy, but at least that may help dry things out a bit. 

Yesterday we took a drive down our road and in a 9 mile stretch, there was high water running over the road in 5 different spots.   The wind caused lots of trees to snap and of course some landed on the road.  The first one Jim was able to drag off, but the next one was reason enough to turn around and take a different route.This bridge got wiped out by high water a few years ago.  If it hadn’t blown out then, it probably would’ve happened in this storm.The dam down by the pond is still holding, but there’s lots of water going over the top.    I took this picture of the pond this morning and I thought I’d go back and compare it to one I took in April.  Oh ya, the pond is lots bigger now.

October 2010  April 2010 The deer didn’t wait for the cover of darkness to come in for a snack yesterday.  They’ve had a rough couple of days too.

Lodge Cam Update Pt. 3

Today we decided to go down by the dam and prune the alder branches that block our view of the pond.  I stacked them in the path and Jim decided to load them up in the boat and take them out for the beavers.  It also gave him a chance to see if we got any good pictures yesterday.   We were optimistic because last night,  just before dark we saw 2 beavers cruising around and then get up on the little bog.   

After checking the pictures, we could tell we had some minor technical problems.  So please ignore the time and date on these.  It’s hard enough changing the SD card while in a boat and it would be darn near impossible to reprogram  it. 

Here we are going back to shore after repositioning it yesterday.  We would’ve waved if we knew we were getting our pictures taken.If you click on this to enlarge it you’ll see 3 beavers out on the little island.   Cool huh? 

There were other pictures of the beavers chewing on the branch and swimming around, but this one was by far the best.

Lodge Cam Update Pt. 2

Well, we went out and checked on the cam today and confirmed what we thought…it’s not going to work.  Here’s a picture it took of the lodge in the daytime.Here’s what we got at night.  Well, this isn’t good at all!  The cam is too far away, the beaver moves too fast to get a clear picture and well, this just isn’t going to work out.So we decided to move it again.  There’s a small floating  bog out there that we call Goose Island.  At first we thought it was an island and the geese really liked sitting on it, hence the original name.  This summer with all the rain, it started to break up and move around.  Anyway, we see the beavers get up on this every evening and morning and it’s right next to the T-bar perch.  So that’s where we put the cam this time. Jim even went back and got a fresh limb to entice the beavers up onto to the bog.   This should work.   It may be a few days before we go back out for the card, but I've got my fingers crossed that we will get a couple good pictures.

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When I loaded up the cam pictures this morning, I was surprised to see this big ol’ tom turkey pecking around in the field yesterday.    We haven’t seen the nice buck since Saturday night, but we haven’t given up on him yet.  He may be out running around looking for ladies.  

What a Difference

Last Friday (October 1) our new trail cam took this pretty picture.

So I thought I’d go out at approximately the same time and trip the cam to take a picture one week later.   
Amazing huh?  There’s hardly any leaves left on the trees around here.  It was a pretty fall, but in my opinion, way too short.

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We keep moving the cams around and we’re seeing some new visitors around here.  A gray fox and a bobcat have had their pictures taken a couple nights in a row.
And we’re always happy when we see the big buck’s picture.  It’s the time of year when he could make any hunter very happy.
This is the little guy we call Spikey.  He looks  like a Billy goat! This morning we were sitting here looking out the window and noticed how much bigger the beaver lodge is compared to earlier in the summer.   So Jim decided we’ve seen enough deer pictures and it’s time to  move a cam out by the lodge.  He’s out there right now with a cam attached to a metal fence post, aiming it at the lodge.  Now, this should be interesting.

Dam Cam

After getting a new trail cam last week, we decided to move the other one down by the dam.  Jim used a bungee cord and attached it to a pitch fork for easy maneuvering.  But mainly because we knew this was just a test to see if we could get a picture of one of the beavers working on the dam.  The first night we got a bad picture of a beaver swimming past the cam.  As the temperature dropped it caused the lens to fog up and we didn’t get any other pictures until after the lens cleared around 11:00 the next morning. 

So yesterday Jim repositioned the cam, moving it back some and aiming it right at the dam.  One problem.  The beavers sealed just about every leak in the dam and no water was coming over it, but  Jim changed that!  He made a small indentation in the mud, causing water to go rushing over it.  We think the sound of running water makes the beavers crazy!  Anyway it worked and we got pictures of this small beaver fixing the leak.

First it had to check out the situation.

Then it swam off and came back with a branch to add to the mud.

It did a little more swimming around, gathered a few more branches, then turned and smiled at the camera!   LOL

It did some more repair work, but hasn’t finish up yet.   You can see on the right side of this picture, there’s still water running over the dam.  This may be a slightly confusing picture.  It was very calm this morning and the trees you see are reflections from the hill on the other side.  Ignore the temperature on it.  It was cool, but not 23 degrees.  More like 33 or so.
Trail cams are really a lot of fun.  You just never know what’s lurking around out there.  Deer, raccoons, bunnies, bear, bobcats…and now beavers.