Saturday, October 12, 2013

TamCam (Set 2)

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I finally picked a productive spot after two consecutive weeks of duds.



It must have been just dark enough here in the woods to make the camera fire in infrared mode. I wonder if this is the same coyote caught in the previous frame. It's the same day, Sunday, about two hours later.



I got nothing but a squirrel's tail in Set 1, so it was nice to get the whole critter this time. We take gray squirrels for granted, but they are not acclimated to people on Mt. Tam and are not easy to see, much less photograph.



Trail cams are built for hunters, not photographers. All a hunter wants to know is whether game is plentiful and at what time of day it passed by. Even the most basic point-n-shoot can take a better picture, though.



Sorta think this is the same coyote again.



Definitely a different buck, though.



And here's a different coyote, a bit younger than the other one. This is close enough to my first set that this could be the same young coyote I caught over there by the bathtub. This coyote and one doe deer (which I'm not bothering to post) were the only two animals that used the main trail. Several pairs of human hikers passed through, all of whom used the main trail. I believe that white stick of plant material in the foreground set off quite a few empty frames when the wind blew. I've got to be more careful about noticing such things when I set up the camera.



This is a shot of me being captured by the camera this morning. Although this is not a regular, maintained trail, it is obviously a people trail; however, I was still surprised to see that so many people used it. I had hikers on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Wednesday! Thankfully I placed the camera next to the animal trail, so none of the passing hikers noticed it. A much better spot was available nearby, but it would have been spotted by hikers for sure. I'd also considered putting it where a tree had fallen across the trail, but it would have been right out in the open. I doubt an animal jumping over the log would have been caught by the camera anyway.

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