Bear checking out the camera

After my last camera in this location was twisted and shut off by the bear, I swapped cameras and tied this one so it would be hard to move. Needless to say, the bear and cubs came back and the sow went for the camera again, giving me some closeups of her face and eye.



It was unable to move or hurt the camera but tried to bite and slobber all over the outside.

It wasn't about to give up, so it tired several more times to dislodge the camera and even ripped some bark off the tree.

One more try.
It finally gave up and went over to dig for bugs in the log.

Vulture approach and landing

The Nikon is very fast on taking photos and took 5 pictures in 8 seconds showing the bird on approach and after it landed 2 seconds later.

The vulture used the wind to almost hover in front of the rock and then side slip onto the rock, not like an eagle or hawk would land. But vultures are more of a soaring bird and was using the wind coming out of the valley giving it good lift along this ridge.

I had the camera too close again and missed the top of the open wings so set it back 8 more inches. Most cameras would have missed this sequence because of the longer delay between photos. Only took 2 seconds for the vulture to land on the rock, it stayed for another photo and then was soaring, all within 8 seconds, much quicker than a 10 second delay on double picture mode.

Switched to the Nikon D100 for Vultures

Weather has been rather wet and diffucult to get clear pictures on the Vulture rock, so I moved in the Nikon D100 and hoping for some sunshine. I left the flash off because they just perch on this rock during the day.

This is the view from the camera.

I refreshed my knowledge in the basic laws of physics on my way back down the rock cliff. First one was gravity ... when my foot got caught in a berry vine that wouldn't break I fell forward and down the rock slide on my hands and knees sliding through the brush. Second was that an object in motion tends to stay in motion ... as my speed increased I realized that friction alone would not help, but was happy to see large patch of wild evergreen berries with thorns as large as fish hooks directly in my path. As the words S.O.B spewed forth from my lungs I wondered how far I would have to travel downhill for the Doppler effect to be noticed. But that was short lived as the B word increased when I hit the thorns. I finally came to a gentle 2 G's stop in the middle of the briar patch, all in all it was an enjoyable experience.

Another step closer on the Vulture photo

I placed the camera closer and aimed it to get more sky into the photo to give a silhouette to the Turkey Vulture on the rock pinnacle. I was hoping that it would be a late afternoon photo so the sun would give a better color to the feathers, but one out of two's not bad. I could use a flash but I don't want to intrude too much on the birds.

Next time out, I'll try to find a way to get the camera higher so I can reduce the sky to the upper 1/3 of the photo, this will let the camera open the lens and let more light in to show the feathers on the bird and still keep the camera close. Lighting is so important in photography and even more when using game cameras because we don't have control of what time of the day an animal will trigger the camera. Here's an example at the same location with better lighting on Morning Dove sitting on the same rock.