Trail Cam shots

[WildlifeNate]

Until my new SLR arrives next week, this is the best I've got to contribute. I currently have 60 trail cameras in the field for my master's research. Here are a few shots (out of 4700) from this past week.

They're all cropped to some degree, but nothing else done with them otherwise.

[OldClicker]

Are they stock 'trail cam' units or did you build them? What kind of triggers do they have? - TF

[Dylan8i]

nice! whats your research on? i finished my masters field work beginning of the summer but im still writing my thesis... its on salamander communities.

[WildlifeNate]

These are stock Cuddeback Experts.

[WildlifeNate]

nice! whats your research on? i finished my masters field work beginning of the summer but im still writing my thesis... its on salamander communities.

I've only just started. I'm looking for a handful of mesopredator species of concern in Texas. I'm looking for river otters, eastern spotted skunks, longtailed weasels, and american badgers. If I can ever manage to get a rabies vaccine, I'll also be mist-netting for the southeastern myotis.

In my first week, I have a picture of a group of 4 otters. Wahoo!

I will be looking for habitat associations between the presence/absence of the species (assuming, of course, that I actually find some of the species I'm looking for). The general area I'm focusing on is the Blackland Prairie tallgrass prairie ecoregion, and I'll be surveying roughly 30,000 acres over the course of my project.

[Ron Kruger]

My gosh! 60 trial cams. You're a dedicated and busy man. It must take hours to run them, like a trapline, and then process and edit all the images of eveything that set off the motion detectors. With that kind of work ethic, I'm sure you have a bright future in wildlife biology. Where did you study?
I wish they made trail cams that would produce an image as good as a DSLR. Some day they will, but they'll probably cost a fortune. It sure would make my job easier, though.

[WildlifeNate]

I've heard of trail cam rigs that will house a SLR camera, but stuff like that went by the wayside years ago when film cameras started to lose market share. An old one may work with a modern DSLR, but I dunno. Battery life would be an issue. If you have (or could get your hands on) an old fully manual film SLR, I bet you could find some of those old trail cams.

60 trail cams is tough to handle. It took me all day yesterday just to download the images. I'm going to need to double the number of memory cards I have (to 120) so I can just swap cards and go. Downloading pictures just takes TOO long. I had 4,700 pictures on my cameras to deal with. It's probably going to take me the better part of the week to sort them and count everything out. I have some small rodents to ID by photo, also.

Next weekend I have to download pictures AND move all 60 cameras to new locations.

I'm basically running the cameras in a grid arrangement. Whenever the stuff comes in, I'll be adding scent lures to the stations to target the specific animals I want, and I should be able to make conclusions about whether my target animals really are absent from a location.

I am currently at Stephen F. Austin State University. Got my bachelor's at Wittenberg University in Ohio. I actually think I'd rather teach biology and environmental science in high school, rather than get into wildlife biology. I really enjoyed being a volunteer naturalist before I got into grad school. I'd like to go a little farther with that and get paid to teach about those sorts of topics.

My gosh! 60 trial cams. You're a dedicated and busy man. It must take hours to run them, like a trapline, and then process and edit all the images of eveything that set off the motion detectors. With that kind of work ethic, I'm sure you have a bright future in wildlife biology. Where did you study?
I wish they made trail cams that would produce an image as good as a DSLR. Some day they will, but they'll probably cost a fortune. It sure would make my job easier, though.

[paulnj]

Those barn owls mating is awesome, but it pretty cool that you got a cooper's hawk too.

[WildlifeNate]

Here are a couple more from my trail cams...same location but different time period.

[BrunoA]

I can't believe that you caught this moment on camera! Well done! I would save this for my thesis writing services!