Yard Fox Looking Healthy

I imagine this is the dog fox, as the female will be lying low with kits this time of year. We may see her in a few weeks.
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No Neck and Skin Tail

Raccoon and Fox in the Front yard

You might have noticed I cut down the big miscanthus grass in the front yard -- it's that time of year.

Not having the white background of a big stand of dead grass has actually helped the camera get a better exposture on the critters at night. I wondered if cutting away the cover would phase the fox and raccoon, but apparently the answer is "no."
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Skin Tail Last Night

A pretty good shot of the fox I am calling "Skin Tail." It looks to me like he's losing more fur on his tail, which would be pretty classic for mange. He's running with a young female I am calling "No Neck."

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Front Yard Raccoon Feeding Without the Fox

I spray painted a bit of old wicker in the front yard last night, which seems to have resulted in the fox staying away and the raccoon staying around a bit longer than usual.

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Coffee and Provocation

The Dog-li-ness blog reports that "The American Kennel Club, desperate to boost their revenues, is considering starting a new club for mutts (possibly named the All American Dog Club), so they can collect registration fees from even more dog owners." Check it out! More on the same topic at the Pet Connection blog, here and here.

The Scottish Terrier and Dog News blog gives us the money shot of haggis for Robert Burns Day. Bobbie was a great man, yes he was. Read his poem about The Twa Dogs. Luath, by the way, was the name of Robert Burns' own dog.

The Camera Trap Codger continues to post jaw-dropping pictures. Check out the recent picture of a cougar. Amazing. What a country we live in. Take a minute also to check out The Game Camera Logbook for more great camera trap tips and shots. God bless America, land that I love.

The Lassie Get Help blog has a nice post on what happened to the Michael Vick's dogs. Good news here; check it out.

A ten-year-old doing surgery on your dog? Right. But check it out -- video from CNN.

Finally, what kind of bird is this? I have flipped through Sibley's and cannot find it, but it is familiar. I feel stupid (again). This is a public cry for help! That's the first step to recovery, right?
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Laughing Fox in the Front Yard

These and quite a few other good shots came from the camera trap.

On a lark, I took a tough "Bonz" dog chew that came free with a bag of food, drilled a hole through the midde of it, and tied it with some parachute cord to a piece of rebar I jammed into the ground. The fox spent a couple of nights working over the chew, as did a pretty big raccoon.

Next, I may put a chew up in the air a bit and tie it off to a spring pole of some kind, just to see how good the fox is at problem-solving.




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Wildlfe In the Yard

It snowed! Fox, raccoon, two colors of squirrel, and a cardinal that was feeding so early in the morning, that it was really night time. The color on the cardinal is off as I had to really lighten the picture and turn up the contrast to see what it was.

One more night with the camera in this location, and then I will move it to the goldfish pond and see what I can find there. Maybe nothing.

I'm a bit surprised I have not gotten a possum on the camera yet -- the fox might be driving them off.

I may put the camera on a bird feeder too, just to see what turns up. I know I have one feeder that is raided by raccoon pretty often. I would like to see how he gets past the squirrel baffles! Easily, apparently.

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Camera Trap Wildlife in the Rain

It was raining yesterday, and again early this morning, but not enough to discourage a small parade of wildlife from coming to my front yard. The rain actually makes the pictures look kind of magical. I can hardly wait until it snows!







I am still having some operator error with the camera. I need to put the food back a little farther to avoid glare, and I also need to figure out how to turn off the date-time and I apparently have managed to get AM and PM confused. There is a learning curve!





I have already learned one thing with the camera trap -- blue jays like kibble dog food! This fellow was banging down a whole piece of Purina, never mind the sunflower seeds all around him. Blue Jays are very aggressive birds, but quite lovely I think.








Here's my friend, the raccoon. I have a small parade of raccoons that have come to the yard over the years, and I think they are less territorial than the fox are.

From display behavior on another photograph, I this raccoon may have met the fox at the feeder -- the clock times also suggests this was happening. The fox seems to have come, departed, and come back again, with the raccoon in the middle part of the visits.

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Thanks to Chris for photoshopping the date out
of one of the fox pics, and making it clearer too!

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Camera Trap Education

My new camera trap has not been running right. The problem has not been hardware -- perfect on that score. The problem has been -- cough-cough -- "operator error."

My first mistake was placing the camera too high. Wrong idea. The camera needs to be at ground level or perhaps up 8-10 inches and pointing slightly down for fox, raccoon, possum, squirrel, ground-feeding birds, etc.

My mistake was that I had the camera about two feet up on a pole and was getting nothing but brush movement. I knew critters were coming, however, as I was losing bait (a simple combination of dog food and bird seed scattered on the ground).

Yesterday evening, I took the camera off the pole and put it on the brick foundation of the greenhouse. Bingo. My first red fox picture. Fat little thing isn't it? I treat my garden fox very well. There is no war on foxes going on at this house.

I think putting the camera up a foot and pointing it slightly down may also reduce some of the glare from the flash. I also clearly need to dispense with my old fox feeder tube -- it just makes for an ugly bit of kit in the background and is not needed. I am also going to take the date and camera number off (there's only one camera, and I do not care what the date is), but leave the time code on.

I notice that the camera trap experts often place bait on a log or rock forcing the critter up to a defined location higher than the surrounding grass and leaf line. I may not need to do that, but it's something to think about.

I have beaver castoreum to attract critters, but I have not yet mixed it up with catnip, as I could not find glycerin (the thinning agent) at the drug store. I will try a health food store today. I may not need a scent bait at all, as fox and raccoon are, I think, pretty well accustomed to coming to my back yard for the occasional snack.

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Setting Up a Camera Trap in My Yard

Inspired by Chris Wemmer at the Camera Trap Codger, and feeling more "spendy" that usual, I dropped $100 and bought a digital trail camera with a 2 Gigabyte memory chip (it will fit my new Nikon L-11 too).

The trail camera model I chose was due to: 1) its relative cheapness, and; 2) the fact that it's a 4 megapixel dedicated unit that comes complete with case, flash, infrared motion detector, and laser pointer (to figure out where the lens is looking).

Basically, this is the kind of kit that would have cost a small fortune a few years back, but it's now cheaper than a decent truck tire. God bless technology.

The 2 GB memory chip will hold a ton of pictures (about 1,800 at high resolution) and the 6 D-cell batteries that fire the camera will supposedly keep it running for about 60 days.

I ordered my camera -- a Moultrie Game Spy D-40 from a place called "Wing Supply" that advertises through Amazon, and it came in very short order via Parcel Post, and was in excellent working order right out of the box.

The first order of business was getting D-cell batteries, and then reading the manual.

I got the basic instructions sussed out over coffee (the camera will fire 1,2 or 3 pictures at various resolutions, as well as take 30-second video, and it will also fire day and/or night, and time-and-date stamp the pictures, etc.).

From reading Camera Trap Codger's excellent posts, and from reading a little from others on line as well, I had learned that camera theft can be a problem, and so too is hiding the camera and placing it correctly so that critters don't notice it too much.

Because I have had electronic cameras before, I also know they are very sensitive to water and shock. My idea was to rig up a camouflaged case for the camera that would further help it keep out of water and perhaps cushion it from shock as well.

Now, to be clear, the Game Spy D-40 is in a hard case that is "double-boxed" in a hard Pelican-type plastic which has gaskets around the edge and also at the lens hole.

That said, in my experience, you can never do too much to keep water out of an electronic camera, and shock is always a concern for any camera going into forest and field.

In order to help protect the camera on all points, I decided to use the shiny, disposable, clear-plastic "snap pack" display case that the camera had originally come in as the "frame" around which to build a foam-and-wood protective camouflage cover for the camera.

The first stop was at the local hardware store for a can of spray urethane insulation. I sprayed this in lumpy mounds on to the outside of the clear disposable-plastic display shell that had once come with the camera.

I then filled the deep inside channel at the back of the snap pack with urethane in order to provide a little more stiffness to that part of the cover.

The spray urethane foam bonded hard and fast, and when it was dry I sprayed-painted it green and daubed a little black paint on top for a camouflage effect.

I then cut out the front of the case so that the lens and sensors of the camera could look out and "see" the wildlife, and I cut a small drain hole at the very bottom in case water did get in between the layers of foam.

Next I cut a piece of plywood to serve as the back of the mount, and I camouflaged it with paint as well.

Once the paint on the plywood was dry, I glued the plastic back of the snap pack case to the plywood with heavy-duty industrial glue (i.e. Liquid Nails).

My idea was simple one: Screw the plywood back of the mounts on to a metal stake.

Once the stake was hammered into the ground, the camera could be carefully slipped into the plastic snap-pack-and-foam slot that was glued to the wood. The fit would be perfect, and hold the camera finger-tight all around the edge.

Once the camera was in the protected slot with the plywood back, the camouflaged foam "outer housing" would go over the front of the camera, protecting it even more from weather and shock, while also helping to break up the outline of the camera from probing eyes. The two small bungee cords (supplied with the camera) would hold the foam cover tight and further secure the entire camera to the plywood screwed to the stake (the plywood can also be screwed or bungeed to a tree separate from the stake).

Between the camera and the snap pack, I would place a short note explaining that the camera was being used by a "field biologist working on his PhD," and that if the finder would leave the camera alone and leave their email address, I would send them all of the pictures from this camera.

Of course the first part of this story is a white lie, but I figure that anyone that gets that far into the inside of the camera case is either a thief, an anti-hunting vegan, or a kid, and the trick is to give them "something for nothing" while guilt-triping them into leaving the camera alone. Plus, I will send them pictures!

Why not just bolt the camera down? I will do that too, trust me! For now, however, the camera is located in front of the greenhouse where the dogs cannot trip the remote switch, and where I have been (occassionally) feeding a few fox and raccoon visitors.

I completed the camera mounting setup today, and so far it seems to work as intended. We'll see if it can go the distance, and if it actually helps keep the camera dry, safe and less visible.

My first, rather modest picture with the camera is appended below. Not much eh?

Well, that's going to be the main difference between me and the Camera Trap Codger, and Cliff over at Game Camera Photo Logbook.

While they have terrific and clear shots of Mountain Lions, Bears, Turkey, Otter, Bobcat, and Grey Fox. I'm going to have very blurry pictures of common backyard birds that I will not be able to identify even with a Sibley Guide. And that's not a joke; that's they way it's going to be.

Welcome to my thick-thumbed life. The secret to my happiness has been keeping my expectations very low.

On the upside, I'm pretty sure I will learn a bit just by playing around (send me tips, folks) and I should get a little better as time progresses.

Plus, it's not like I have to pay to develop the pictures to see what I have on the camera. God bless digital cameras.

At the worst, I figure I will eventually get some mediocre shots of red fox, raccoon, possum, and deer that come in and out of my yard at night. We even have a 10-point buck that occassionally visits the goldfish pond.

Tomorrow I will cook up a little of the beaver castoreum I have out in the garage and see if I can get the camera up and "really running" for tomorrow night. Today was really just a practice session.

There's nowhere to go but up.



Is this a vireo? A catbird? Nope,. a plain old mockingbird. The birds I know best are ones that come in a bucket.
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