Saturday, January 24, 2015

Secret Deer Portraits

Having snow on the ground is awesome, not least because it lets me see the trails of all the animals that cross our yard. We get a lot of deer traffic here, as it turns out. About a week ago I followed some deer tracks to a spot at the edge of the woods where the tracks converged with a bunch of other trails; a small tree in this area was even missing some strips of bark, possibly from a male deer's antler-rubbing. I guess this is a deer highway! I relocated my trail camera to watch this spot (I think I've finally figured out the best way to set up this device), and indeed, the deer definitely pass this way:
 

How nice of these creatures to pause exactly in front of the camera to have their portraits taken! :) The lady above had her mouth open in all three of her pictures; I'm not sure whether she's chewing or panting, but why would a deer be panting in the middle of winter? And is this next deer (who was traveling just behind the first) a young male, with those bumps on his head?


The camera has a night mode, too, which is very cool (and has something to do with infrared light). Ooo, spooky deer:
 

The camera has picked up a couple of other creatures passing by this spot as well. I'm happy to discover that the camera can sense things as small as a Fox Squirrel digging in the leaves:
 

And I can't say for sure the identity of this mysterious canine visitor, but it's definitely something I haven't seen here with my own eyes yet. Fox is a possibility, but so is neighboring dog, and I've seen some rather large dog-like prints in this area in recent days:
 

Hooray for cool and mysterious sightings aided by technology!

3 comments:

  1. Awsome pictures. Sooo interesting

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  2. Very cool! Do the deer come within view from the house, or are they deeper in the woods?

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    1. We do see them pretty frequently from the house, often crossing the driveway, but it looks like they spend a lot of time traveling through the woods, too.

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