Cougar photo on the trail camera

This photo was taken yesterday at 2:30 in the morning using a Sony P41. Had to tramp through the rain, sleet and cold wind today to check several of my cameras, but this picture made my day. This ridge trail has been good for cougar when they pass through, but sometimes it's a long wait between cat pictures.

I think this one might be staying in the area because I saw tracks a month ago about a mile from this trail. Had several cams with me so I set one down the ridge about 50 yards to try and see just how far he uses the trail.

Used the stealth mode for this coyote

I built a trail camera using the XLP board sold by www.whitetailsupply.com/ which has a stealth mode that delays the camera shutter for 5 seconds after the animal triggers the sensor. This allows you to study how long an animals stays in the camera field of view and it's actions rather than just snap a quick picture. In this case the coyote stopped and was looking around. For trails it's kind of a shot in the dark to wait 5 seconds to take a picture, but it's fun to use for certain locations.

It also can be set for fast first pictures and double picture mode like most of the game camera boards I use.

I like the color markings on the Blue Heron

It's always fun and a challenge to get a closeup of a Great Blue Heron. Birds are my favorite animals to get closeups of when using my game cameras. It takes a lot of time to find the right place to set the camera to catch the heron on land. I have a few with them in water, but as much rain as we get it's difficult to find a place for the camera to stay above water.

Otter pups having fun

This photo was taken last year on April 29 and shows how big four otter pups will be when the female begins showing them the country. One adult or 2 year old is in the foreground, you can tell by the length and size of the tail. I had to climb a tree that leaned over the river to hide the camera from the otter, they are very smart and hard to photograph.

I think I might set the camera on the otter landing, showing the beaver, just a little farther back to get a larger field of view. Otter run almost all the time and hard to get a close picture, I have some but was lucky.

Thanks for all the comments and if anyone has a request for a certain animal I'll check and see what I can do.

Activity on the beaver pond

Getting an early start for the beaver pond to find all there landings and scent pushups. This is also a good otter landing when the pups first learn how to swim. Usually a female has her pups in this pond but doesn't bring them to this landing until they can swim.

I set the camera just to check on how the picture will turn out and if I need to change the camera angles. Lot easier to do this with beaver than to miss an otter with the pups.

Good game camera setup for bobcats

Starting to set a few cameras out for bobcats so I'll be ready for spring breeding season. The males do a lot of traveling during this time and they use this log to cross the creek. You can see how I set the camera in back of the tree so if an animal comes from the left it won't be able to see the camera until the picture is taken.

The one picture is the view from the camera and shows what the picture will look like during the day, but most bobcat photos are taken at night. I just realized that the switch on the camera is in the off position and can't remember if I turned it on after taking the picture. Oh well, certainly wouldn't be the first time.

Raven looks to be the referee

This photo was taken with my Nikon trail camera I designed. Had it set up for bobcats or maybe a coyote with the camera set 20 feet from the log, then zoomed the lens in to get the picture I wanted. Set the speed flash above the camera for good lighting and got lot's of hawk pictures. This one shows the two hawks and the raven looks like a referee.

So much for my otter log

Found some otter sign on this log several weeks ago so I set my trail camera up on a small bush aimed the log. In the mean time we have had several rain storms and the water raised very fast so I hustled out to pull it to keep from getting too wet. Got several pictures of this possum walking the log in both directions but no otter. I had to pull all my cameras that were around water.