Get a Load of These Amazing* Images From My Backyard Trail Camera
*And by 'amazing' I mean 'boring and unworthy of the Discovery channel.'
About once a week, I retrieve the SD card from the trail camera I have bungee’d to a dogwood tree in my back yard, insert it into my computer, and download the images it contains onto my computer, convinced that this time the camera has captured something special: an ivory-billed woodpecker riding on the back of a thylacine, say. Or a komodo dragon, pulling a wagon and drinking from a flagon. Or Bigfoot Elvis.1
Instead, what I usually find is something like this:
Or this:
This is not the stuff of a David Attenborough nature documentary.
I ordered the trail camera a couple of months ago after our neighborhood list-serv lit up with reports of a fox. Foxes seem to come and go in our patch of Maryland suburbia. There have been times when a fox has commuted regularly in the space between our house and the neighbor’s, keeping to a tight schedule on its early morning jaunts. Seeing the fox in person is a matter of luck. I wanted to catch it with science.
And so I got the motion-sensing trail camera, the cheapest I could find that also takes photos at night with an infrared flash that supposedly doesn’t startle wildlife — or neighbors. Would it catch a fox in the act? Or would it catch…
I’d like to say that grayish blob in the middle of the wall is a squirrel with alopecia, but it’s a rat. We stopped filling our bird feeders — spilled seed attracts rats — and haven’t captured it on the trail camera since.
The camera mostly picks up things we can already see during the day from our porch: squirrels2, rabbits, birds.
But very occasionally — only three times in the last three months — a fox does show up. Here’s the best photo:
I like knowing that there’s a nocturnal world out there and that it includes foxes.
The camera has the ability to capture video, but I’m not sure I have the patience to scroll through it, looking for something interesting. It’s bad enough clicking through endless shots of me mowing the lawn, my dog trotting past and squirrels chasing each other.
It’s another story for a friend out in Portland, Ore. Mark Graves is a photographer for The Oregonian. His backyard trail camera captured a raccoon untying a rope, moving it out of the way, and retying it:
Since Mark posted the video on YouTube, more than 270,000 people have watched it. He’s since uploaded more raccoon content — and named the dexterous raccoon “Knottingham.”
I’m jealous. I’d love to go viral with my backyard trail camera. I guess I need to keep checking that SD card, hoping that Bigfoot — or Elvis — decides to stop by one night.
Happy trails
Do you have trail camera? Have you captured cool shots on it? Post a comment to make me jealous. And thanks for reading.
Scientists are divided on exactly what Bigfoot Elvis is. It’s either a Bigfoot dressed as Elvis (late period, Las Vegas, cape-wearing Elvis) or it’s Elvis dressed as a Bigfoot. I’m hoping to get a National Science Foundation grant to study this.
Including chipmunks. Chipmunks are squirrels, remember.