Fawns!

The fawns are out in full swing now.  Born fairly recently in this area, they are still dependent on their mother for food and protection.

These pictures come from Lucketts, Virginia where I put up a camera a few weeks ago.  Many thanks to the landowners who agreed to have a camera placed on their property.

In about another week or so, the raspberries will be out and animals should be all over these bushes.  Perfect for camera-trapping!

As usual, the batteries were checked, the SD card put back in, and the camera turned on.  I'll check this one again in about 3 weeks or so.

The Most Common Camera-Trap Visitor Is. . .

The white-tailed deer!

Deer walking on a popular game trail in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Other animals can't even come close to showing up in numbers comparable to deer. 

I have known this fact since I started doing this, but today I crunched some numbers to get exact percentages of deer having their pictures taken by my cams.  

It took some time to organize thousands of pictures into files and folders, but the time I spent doing this offered a good break from studying for my looming final exams that I have been spending a ridiculous amount of time on in the past week.

The results below omit videos, pictures of me taken by the cameras, false camera triggers, and test pictures.

White-tailed deer hold the record for most camera-trap images taken at a staggering 52% of total images of animals.  

Raccoons can't even catch up, but hold steady in second place by appearing in 29% of my pics.

Foxes come in third place and have shown up in 12% of my pics.

All other animals shown on this blog make up for the 7% that is in my collective category of fourth place.

What makes deer have such a greater number of camera appearances is based on a whole combination of factors.  

First of all, deer are very numerous in northern Virginia, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to see them so often.  

Deer also frequently travel in pairs or small groups.  If a camera triggers where there are multiple deer (as the cameras often do), the deer appearance rate goes up significantly since I account for multiple individuals of the same species in these statistics.  Deer also travel in both day and night and aren't as camera shy as many other animals are.

Deer live alongside humans in many areas of northern Virginia.  Seeing a camera in the woods does not seem to bother deer at all, since they are so used to human-made objects anyway.

Other factors to consider when wondering why deer show up so often are:  travel patterns, food availability for deer vs. other animals, skittishness, camera placement, camera height, mating seasons of deer vs. other animals, other animals in the area, how frequently I check the cameras, and many many more.

Busy Days

I've been busy, really busy.  Schoolwork, homework, studying, work, and volunteering is all part of my schedule.

Camera trapping never ceases though, as the cameras are hard at work as well.

Thanks to my girlfriend and fellow cam-trapper
for taking this picture and accompanying me this weekend.

I've been back and forth to my new camera trap sets in Leesburg, Virginia.  It gets really windy on some of Leesburg's hills and small mountains.

Autumn olive chokes the forests in these parts.  Although it is an invasive species, autumn olive does provide a lot of cover, and one thing you want in a forested area when hiding a camera-trap, is a great amount of cover.

Poison ivy is around here as well.  I can see the hairy stems, the spreading roots, and old growth of the plants.   It hasn't even grown leaves yet this year,  but that didn't stop it from leaving rashes on my body for the better part of last week.  Of course, there is no telling exactly where I got the poison ivy from since a great deal of my work, walks, and research is done outdoors.

The point is, is that poison ivy is nasty, and will still affect you even when it doesn't have its infamous "leaves of three".  Boots, jeans, long sleeves, hiking gaiters, and a shower afterwards are all necessary.

The good news though is that I have deployed a whole army of new cameras out and they are heavily covered and hidden in poison ivy patches where autumn olive also lives.

One of my newest camera trap sets has been at a fresh den site.  This den has three openings and seems well used.  Me and a few other people familiar with the area were wondering if it was a fox den or a groundhog's den.  We agreed to put a camera up and find out.

Turns out that it was indeed a fox den.  A pretty lookin' feral cat also came by.

There is a ridiculous amount of coyote scat located on the trail adjacent to the den.  There is also fox scat around as well, but the coyote scat is dramatically different in size.  It should only be a matter of time before a coyote gets curious or wants to take a whiff of the smell of the fox den.  During that time, I hope to get a picture of a coyote on this camera.

Also around here are many bluebird birdhouses lining meadows so they were flying all around. I also spotted an American Kestrel perched on a wire, and many vultures waiting for their next carrion meal.  All in all, camera trapping has been going well this week even though I personally have been very busy.

Scavenger Hawks

When there is fresh meat around, you never know exactly what animal will take the opportunity to eat some of it.

Red-tailed hawks have came by my cameras a lot to eat some of this fresh meat.  I've captured them eating  dead deer, as seen in Deer for Dinner: Food Fights.  

I captured this type of hawk recently again, but this time it was in Leesburg, Virginia.

The fields, meadows, and woods of Leesburg offer some prime hawk hunting grounds.  

Red-shouldered hawks, red-tailed hawks, cooper's hawks, broad-winged hawks, and sharp-shinned hawks populate the skies here. 

What really surprised me at this camera set though, was how quickly the hawk came in to eat after I set out the bait.  I placed the meat here at 3:08 PM as I had the camera rolling (as I realized when I got my picture taken doing so).  The first hawk picture (as seen above) was taken at 3:11 PM on the same day.

That's only 3 minutes!

What is even more surprising is knowing the fact that it took me at least 2 minutes to walk back to my car (located maybe 30 yards away), set my gear down, and pull out of the parking space.  If I was there for another 60 seconds, I may have been able to view this hungry hawk first-hand, but I didn't know it was there in the first place.