Category: Animals

Ok I’ll be honest: I forgot about our new wildlife camera. It had been happily sitting at the edge of our back patio, snapping away for four months now and when I rediscovered it yesterday there were more than 1600 images on it!

Most were empty and probably the result of snow, rain or a rogue leaf triggering the sensor, but there were quite a few animals to be seen as well.

As usual there were a lot like the above (which was taken on Christmas Day while we were in Japan), but also this shot of a squirrel being a bit more industrious:

Is that an acorn in his mouth?

There were also many – hundreds – of rabbit photos, all of which were at night in the snow. As you see there’s two in the above shot (taken early January), but what also caught my eye are the footprints in the top right. Here’s a better photo of them from a few days earlier:

They’re fairly big which suggests a deer, but they could also simply be a rabbit hopping through the snow? Unfortunately the camera didn’t catch them being made.

Two different cats visited these past few months, one quite a bit portlier than the other. Each was only in a single photo, so they were just passing through.

Here’s the fox from the last set, also passing through. Was he looking for rabbits, or perhaps smaller prey?

Such as whatever the above is? This is too small for a chipmunk so I assume some sort of mouse, and as we can tell from the blur it was legging it past the feeder. The white streak is its eye reflecting the UV light from the camera.

Chipmunks are also speedy little guys and difficult to catch on these cameras so the above is a good photo of one. This is fairly recent, so maybe it’s gotten warm enough for them to emerge from their burrows?

Birds are also somewhat rare on these photos, but here we see a mystery bird, a cardinal and a robin. Can anyone identify the one on the left.

And lastly this skunk visited us one night! There were a half dozen or so pics of it, all at very close range so his face was never visible. The camera is right next to the house so he came very close. I wonder if Loppi (who often monitors the yard from a window perch) saw him?

And if you’re wondering, there wasn’t even a single deer photo. This is highly unusual to say the least. I wonder where they’ve been?

We bought a new wildlife camera. It was very inexpensive since I didn’t want bluetooth or other fancy features, and to be honest the photos aren’t great. But let’s see what’s been visiting our yard anyway!

There’s always deer. Almost every single night they walk through our backyard, never coming onto the patio. The night vision of the camera couldn’t sense too far beyond the edge of the patio, so sometimes the deer are visible just by the glow of their eyes.

The above is a rare daytime sighting of a deer in our yard, and it was just before 9 am on a weekday when both KLS and I were at work. I can’t remember the last time ever witnessing a deer in the yard during the day, so this is very unusual.

The vast majority of photos – over 200! – were of squirrels, especially after we put a feeder out with corn in it. The guy in the photo just above has food grains on his face and in the previous shots was inside the feeder eating the remainder of the corn.

The squirrels were never photographed at night, and the vast majority of photos was just one. Above we see three in the same photo!

The above photo shows what I believe is the wispy end of a squirrel tail as it sat upon the camera!

There were a lot of rabbit photos as well, and all of them were at night. They seemed to be moving around a lot, because most of the time they were in a single photo rather than in a series.

The above was unexpected! Atop the feeder perches a red cardinal, and this was taken at dusk as well. I suppose he was interested in the corn; I wonder if he got any. He was only in this one photo.

Again, there was only photo of this mysterious beast, likely on patrol. I wonder what he was looking for? This was taken late at night.

The fox seems to visit every few days, and there were dozens of photos of him. We’ve seen foxes in our yard before, so this isn’t a surprise. He’s probably after the rabbits!

And I’ll end with this one. It was taken around 7 am and at first glance looks like a fox but on second glance not so much. I have my suspicions as to what type of animal this is. What do you think?