Caught on the trailcam

How many photos of my coffee table do I really need? The answer is none, but this morning I had to delete a bunch of them while downloading photos from the trailcam we got for Christmas. No, my coffee table has not been hitting the trail; it just happened to be in the frame while we were trying out different settings on the trailcam and getting it ready to go out to the woods. Apparently we hadn't yet figured out how to delete.

After a month in the woods, the trailcam this morning offered up many many photos of the same plot of ground from which a woodland creature had just departed, or maybe the motion sensor was set off by a gust of wind. It got plenty of photos of squirrels, which is not surprising given the abundant nut trees in that part of the woods. It also caught raccoons, a possum, several deer, and a mystery critter that looks like the back end of a beaver, except it's in a spot where beavers generally aren't.

Also lots of photos of the resident woodsman carrying a ladder or chainsaw up the hill to prune fruit trees or pulling fallen trees down the hill with the tractor. Probably we ought to move the trail-cam to a less tractor-friendly location. I'd like to put it down by the creek to see what critters visit, but it would probably take a shot of every passing car as well.

Photo quality is uneven, which is not surprising since the trailcam has no sense of composition. Night photos look like something out of a horror movie, with glowing eyes atop blurry shapes that could be mistaken for space aliens or hoofed fiends though they're probably just raccoons.

We've been hearing a lot of coyotes in the night but apparently they're not visiting the vicinity of the trailcam. No sign of foxes or turkeys either. I keep hearing that bobcats are getting more common in Ohio and I'd really love to see one, but dream on. In 20 years living in these woods, we've seen a bobcat exactly once, and it had disappeared before we could get the word "bobcat!" out of our mouths.

But still we hope. Whatever passes by, the trailcam will be ready.