Trail Cam No. 4

 

It's too bad that my coveted game trail position proved fruitless. My zeal for mysterious animal captures was a bit too much, I guess, because I probably should have left it in the woods for longer than one week! Oh well, better luck next time.

So the trail cam sat around the house for a bit before finding a home in the yard, ripe to capture all the comings and goings of a closing of a season. Good timing too, because right now I'm looking out at a foot of fresh powder - screaming, no more yard work for months!

 

The fox has been back lately, but it is undecided if he is the culprit behind the tussle Tina got into a few weeks ago. She's okay though, and I have my money on an owl attack.

Do you like our goose head puppet? It's part of a much larger costume, a sort of mascot for our group of friends and our beloved band, The Goosepimp Orchestra. We are the keepers of the sacred costume these days.

And of course there is the ever present Miss Phyllis, whose supple coat keeps her frolicking deep into the colder weather. She's the softest cat ever, you know. Such a cutie.

Check out the whole Trail Cam Series here!

Orange Season

It's orange season in Vermont! You know, the time of year that you have to wear orange into the woods so you don't get shot at by hunters? It's currently bear, turkey, grouse, fox, deer, and rabbit season. Guns, bows, and traps, oh my! Now, I'm not a hunter and I live in a state forest, so I don't really know the rules and regulations here, but I like to be on the safe side. And I could hear shooting in the distance. But I wasn't going to let that deter me from hanging my trail cam near a game trail I found.

However, wearing orange doesn't keep me from being on edge the whole time. I don't prefer to explore the woods alone. If AGP isn't up for the adventure, I usually try to convince Tina, but she wasn't up to getting her paws wet today. So off into the woods I go on my merry way, set to bask in the whimsy of the forest and try not to get shot.

For solo expeditions, I like to take the time to frolic and play with my cameras. In my camera bag, I packed my macro lenses and hoods, waterproof camera, trail cam, water bottle, and waterproof bag for all my non-waterproof toys because I have to cross the brook and it is relatively raging this time of year.

I also make sure to wear my calculator watch so I can keep track of the time and do on-the-fly calculating!

 
I am on a huge biodiversity kick lately. I just want to identify everything. Sure, late fall might not be the best time for this hobby, but there is still a lot out there rocking the chilly weather and ready to name. I am particularly drawn to mosses these days. It must be because they are so easy to spot in the defoliated forest! But then again, they are sooo dang hard to identify.

Umm... any ideas?

Look! Artist's conk mushrooms! At least that I can identify. Apparently people use these as natural canvases for etching and painting. I don't super understand the appeal. The white band on these mushrooms are this year's new growth.

There are a lot of balsam fir saplings in my local woods. You can tell the difference between balsam fir and hemlock from the length of the needles. Balsam fir has longer, more delicate needles.

And of course there are the always odd looking Indian pipe flowers, also known as a corpse plant. These specimens are dead and the bulb at the top of the stem holds the seeds. See a photo of a living corpse plant here! As you can see, the living plant has a bent stalk (like a pipe) and becomes erect once it has been pollinated.

After enough exploring and leaf lounging, I made my way stealthily towards the game trail running I recently discovered running alongside the Burnt Meadow Brook, just a short walk from our house. I decided to hang the trail cam here to see what kind of wildlife (or human life!) might be frequenting our neighborwoods.

Interested in knowing what kinds of goodies I have captured on the trail cam so far? Check it out!

After stumbling across some paw prints and a flurry of blue jay feathers, I tricked myself into thinking I was being stalked by a fisher and high stepped it back to our banks and the safety of my house among the trees.

 Home!

Trail Cam No. 3

Well, I think we can say with confidence who was responsible for the deaths of our chickens! We had heard rumors of this little fox living in the neighborhood, but had yet to see him ourselves. Does catching him on the trail camera count?

I love this picture because if you look closely at the right side of the photo, you can see two glowing eyes staring back. Who could that be? Cat? Coon?

Okay, it's not fair to put all the chicken death blame on the fox. We have a smattering of racoons in the neighborhood as well, including one who once stole our trash and another who I caught peeping in the big picture window the other night. I suppose he could be responsible too.

I stuck the trail cam a little lower to the ground than last time and was rewarded with captures of the less exotic animals that frequent our yard as well the creatures of the dark. Though I was bummed that a lot of the night pictures came out blurry and a little washed out this time. Oh well. 

This is our rooster, Steve French.

We call this one Pat because we can't tell if he is a boy or a girl yet.

I wonder where I will put the trail cam next!

Take a look at the last trail cam collections here:

Trail Cam No. 1

Trail Cam No. 2

Trail Cam Goes on a Trip

Trail Cam Goes on a Trip

When I was looking through some old trail cam photos, I noticed an odd series of captures that didn't really seem to make sense... what is this sorcery?!?

Until I remembered that before we left for New York City a few weeks back, we had quickly grabbed the camera so we could show it to AGP's brother. It seems it proceeded to capture the journey. As it turns out, we forgot to turn it off.

So here goes the trail cam's trip to NYC - from the woods, to the car and into the city!!!

Seems the cam appropriately captured the transition between the lush greenness of Vermont to the sterile grayness of NYC! Plus my legs!

Trail Cam No. 2

I have been seriously slacking with sharing my trail cam captures lately. In fact, we haven't had the cam going at all this summer! So you will just have to make due with the best shots from late winter into spring.

For those of you unfamiliar with my trail cam, take a look at the first roll here: Trail Cam No. 1.

Here we go...

We were very excited to discover a North American Porcupine had stumbled into the path of the cam. Did you know that porcupines are the second largest rodent in the states behind beavers?

And now check out this utter specimen of majesty - the Ruffed Grouse, colloquially known as a Partridge:

This here is the crowned jewel of our trial cam trials. What are the odds of this fancy-ass bird strutting his stuff directly in front of our very own cam? Now, elementary biology tells us that this is most likely a male exhibiting a mating display, however, both sexes of ruffed grouse do similar displays, so for all we know, this is a just flashy female. 

Ahh! A brown, mystery snake! Just kidding - this here is the tail of the local forest hound that haunts our proverbial moors. Occasionally you can hear him baying in the distance (or sometimes right down on the river banks) for whatever reasons a forest hound has to bay. 

Racoon butt! It's not that shocking that these are in the neighborhood. A few weeks ago we found a little stash of our personal trash way out across the river. Seems some little creeper, most likely of the raccoon variety, was hauling loose trash bags away for a snack. Don't worry - we cleaned it all up and have been in the practice of locking our trash up more responsibly!!

This little guy on the right of the frame is an American Red Squirrel, less commonly and more ridiculously known as a Fairydiddle.

Eventually we moved the camera back to our side of the river where we were hoping to catch some very local action.

Here is a shot of our river at night in the rain that I thought was pretty neat:

And then... BOOM! MOOSE!! Right in our own backyard! We have yet to see one actually in person so this was a big deal.

We believe this beautiful sheila to be a female moose. And despite the grainy quality of this picture, she sure does conjure up some imaginings about what sort of epic moose traffic we may be missing out on right in our own yard.

I made this here.

Sweet Gif, amiright? I also made this one of the sunlight dappled forest floor as captured by the trail cam:

Very tranquil. And further, we captured these odd creatures aping through the woods:

Ahh! Attack of the tie-dye monster!! Oh wait - that's just me.

Even used intermittently and even though we have to sort through a lot of garbage pics to find the (mostly) gems, the trail cam is an awesome thing to have hiding in the woods. It's so cool to think that these animals are traipsing around the forest, doing their animal thing all the while we are inside acting like humans.

In fact, I'm inspired right now to boot up the ole cam and see what kind of late summer activity we can capture in the yard!