Posts Tagged ‘trail cam’
Safe Visitor
The month of May arrives for the year 2017 and we are here to greet it with bells on. Well, with something on. I’m just not sure what.
On a bright side, ever since I moved the trail cam back for a wider view of the coop, the number of images captured revealing potential predators roaming around has been minimal.
Most recent, a captured image showed an appearance by a visitor we dearly love having around.
Seeing a deer wandering by seems like a message that there aren’t any scary beasts in the vicinity. How long do you think this will be the norm?
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Meanwhile, this morning we reach 72 hours since Dezirea’s symptoms appeared. As of last night, she had not wavered very far either direction toward better or worse.
Cyndie and I spent a little time talking through the situation before turning in for bed. We want to remain open to whatever lesson this presents for us. We can only treat her through options within our means. Whether she recovers, or this becomes an end of life event, we must accept the outcome. We would like to achieve the peace that Dezirea is projecting.
We will continue to do everything possible to provide comfort to Dezirea while helping her get better if she can. She’s in charge of the rest..
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Morning Visitor
When I moved the trail cam away from the coop to provide a better view, I also adjusted a setting so it would only capture one image per trigger. I felt that getting 400 images in one 24-hour period was a little excessive. The first day after making these changes, there were zero pictures.
The batteries had died.
I replaced the batteries and prepared for the new views.
Now I am going to reset the number of images per trigger. In the past few days, we ended up getting only a single image from each overnight span of hours. The images captured in the first two nights were simply a pair of eyes in the dark. For some reason the camera isn’t taking a second image before the visitor departs. There’s probably another setting I need to review for time between triggers.
The good news is, thus far, the predators aren’t loitering around searching for ways inside the coop.
This morning, in the minutes when the sun was beginning to appear over the horizon, the cam snapped more than just a pair of eyes. We are guessing it very well could be the same critter whose eye reflections glowed the other two nights.
Here is our first view of the fox checking out our hen house.
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Author Captured
Before we moved the chicks out to the coop, we had dumped some of their droppings in the manure pile and noticed how hyper it made Delilah over the scent. Thinking it might do the same thing to natural predators, we decided to move the trail-cam to monitor the pile for a few days to survey for night prowlers attracted to the new chicken smells.
The only thing we captured was the author of this blog in his natural habitat.
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Roost Achieved
I was all excited to check the image card after another overnight on the trail camera, but there was nothing there. I think the batteries expired. If any new prowlers showed up on the second night, we’ll never know.
In a strange result of nature, we received a quarter of an inch of rain yesterday before I got home, but the grounds looked like five-times that amount had fallen.
There’s almost nowhere to step that doesn’t turn out muddy when you move off the pavement or wood chips. Delilah jumped up on Cyndie in a fit of excitement and painted a wonderful image with her dirty paw. It’s time to pull out her kiddie pool and park it by the front door so she can wash her feet each time we enter the house.
On my way home from work yesterday, I stopped in Hudson to pick up some accessories to improve our electrical hook-up to the coop. It’s just extension cord for the time being, but at least it can be more soundly secured extension cord while it’s there.
I’m working toward properly burying a supply wire from the barn and securing it per electrical code guidelines, but the chicks needed heat much sooner than I could execute the necessary steps to wire it right the first time.
Later in the evening, when we walked down to reset the trail camera with new batteries and a cleared image card, we found one of the Rhode Island Reds had made her way up onto one of the two parallel roosts that offer the highest perch in the coop.
I have wondered whether having the roosts set right at the level of the large window would be a drawback for them, so seeing a bird on the roost was a big deal for me. I felt good that she didn’t panic or jump down when I came all the way up to the window.
I’m not confident they will be so comfortable when it is a large cat that shows up to look in on them.
If it proves to be a problem, I can easily add a board to provide increased privacy for them. While we were lingering there, one of the Buff Orpingtons joined the Red up on the roost. It won’t take long for the rest of the copy cats (chicks) to follow suit, I’m sure.
Remember, our chickens are brilliant.
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Close Watch
I think the trail cam was too close to the coop. It seemed to trigger upon the movement of the shadow across the front door. There were 400 images recorded over the 24 hour period! That was really only 200 triggers, because I had left the setting at 2 images per activation.
The chick(en)s were under close watch for this first day in the coop. Temperature is not controlled as much as it was in the brooder located inside the barn. As far as I can see, they are not showing any signs of discomfort or distress. Why would they? These birds have moved into a Taj Mahal of chicken coops.
Still, Cyndie is not sure we are avoiding minimal desired temperature and is checking on them regularly.
I peeked in the window after setting up the camera Sunday night.
Cyndie checked on them first thing in the morning, yesterday.
Then she stopped by several times during the day.
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Delilah even made an attempt to monitor their status on her own. Luckily, Cyndie was on the other end of the leash.
Finally, at the end of the day, the front door got opened for some adjustments and the introduction of a larger food dispenser. With little in the way of bugs to eat, the poor birds are devouring the starter granules faster than Cyndie can keep up.
That was all interesting enough, but the real winner on the trail cam was the night vision capture. It didn’t take long for us to have the first visitor make an appearance. There is no doubt in my mind that my attempts to critter-proof our coop will be well-tested.
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Let the games begin…
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Fly Away
There are days that I would if I could. Fly away, that is.
I recently moved our trail cam out into the open for a change, aiming it at the upward slope of the driveway in the direction toward the road which is out of sight over the hill. I wasn’t expecting to see too much in the way of wild life at this location, but instead was curious how it would do to record vehicles coming and going.
When we are in the house, cars and even delivery trucks will come and go without us noticing.
After a few days of photos, I declare it does okay for capturing auto traffic, but it is not very consistent about when it picks up the motion. Varying speed of the vehicles would make some sense as one explanation, except the speed is probably pretty similar at that point. I know I was driving very slow when it almost missed my car arriving home from work yesterday.
One thing we have noticed about putting the camera out in the open is that we get a LOT of empty, or almost empty shots as a result of bird activity. At the same time, capturing a bird at just the right moment of flight can be a real treat.
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Deer Crossing
Our latest positioning of the trail cam has proved successful in capturing some deer traffic on —or across— one of our pathways. Snapped ’em coming and going. Based on the hoof prints we have seen, it was obvious there are some youngsters hanging around. While this spot appears to be a crossing point, the little one had altered course toward the camera in the wee hours of the morning.
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Warm Rays
When I left for work yesterday morning, there was actually less snow on the driveway than when we walked down to the barn the night before to check on the horses. The pavement was warm enough that it was melting from the bottom up. When the sun came up, the snow began to vanish. We had about 8 inches of accumulation and it barely lasted 24 hours.
From the labyrinth cam…
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Astute observers may notice the fantastic jump in temperature recorded by the trail camera. Seems the direct sunlight against the trunk of the tree and the plastic of the camera body creates a significant amplification of the air temp. I’m pretty sure it didn’t reach 89° (F) here yesterday afternoon.
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Not Much
I moved the trail cam over the weekend and am not happy with the results. I wanted to try a more open area so there would be less branch clutter in the foreground of the view.
I chose the labyrinth garden.
I’m not sure why, but the result was picture after picture with no discernible activity. Over a hundred in two days.
Birds, maybe?
There were surprisingly few images during darkness. However, we did get a tiny glimpse of one animal that was conspicuously absent from all the images captured when we had the camera stationed on the trail in the woods…
Shy little bugger, she. That was all the further she moved into the field of view at 4:30 in the morning.
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Canine Visits
So much for using our trail cam to capture images of all the wildlife wandering our trails. Nothing but dogs this last time, traveling in pairs, even.
I have a whole new respect for what Delilah’s been sensing every time we walk our paths. I’m sure she is entirely aware of these scofflaws who regularly take advantage of our easy access to wherever the heck it is they are going.
There are 3 different dogs that have been making themselves at home on our trail at the southern edge of our property. I suspect that 2 of them are likely owned by a close neighbor. Driving past their place last week, I noticed a line of white flags across the front yard that looked a lot like the kind used to mark invisible fence installations.
Maybe they are working to keep the dogs off the road. Apparently they’ve left the back door toward our place wide open.
There’s no real harm done by their trespassing, but after all the fretting we have done over Delilah doing the same thing to others, it feels like they are getting away with something that they shouldn’t.
At least I now have a better idea of what Delilah is up to when she goes astray. I always figured she was chasing wildlife, or neighboring livestock. Now I suspect she is probably trailing along on the route of other dogs, returning the favor of marking each other’s passage.
I have no idea what this guy is carrying. It looks like a big branch, but it brings to mind the mysterious frozen cow’s leg we found laying in the middle of the trail down in that area last winter. It gives me new insight into how it could have possibly gotten to where it was that we stumbled upon it.
Other than the weekend we had two strange dogs show up by the house last fall, we haven’t been aware of how many and how often we have had uninvited canine visitors.
There have been tracks visible on occasion, but we weren’t quite sure whether it was coyotes or domestic dogs leaving the impressions. From now on I will be much more inclined to suspect stealthy dogs are the ones cuttin’ through.
At least, until our trail cam proves something different.
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Relative Something 