A 4 Month Long Wait

 

I've been doing a little bit of a test to see what happens when I leave a camera up for a long time.  This was to test the camera, the batteries, water-resistance, and my own human scent near the camera. 

Usually I'll leave a camera up for a week to three weeks before checking it.

The test camera was left alone for 4 months and 2 days.  It sat through the hot days at the end of summer, through heavy rains, and recently, flurries of snow.

I gave volunteers the GPS coordinates, trail description, and a description of the camera.  They were then sent them off to find it in the wilder parts of Fairfax County, Virginia.

It was a fun game for them to try to see who would be the one to locate it first.

The best part though, was getting the emails of the pictures after they checked the camera's SD card.

We were hoping for foxes and coyotes, because in theory, our human scent should have been at an extreme minimum since it was there for 4 months.

No coyotes or foxes were photographed, but the favorite animals photographed seemed to be the wild turkeys. 

The pictures were taken near the end of September.

There's no word yet on whether or not these turkeys made it to Thanksgiving.



Switchback Turkeys

Raccoons will touch the camera, open the camera, and even try to take the camera home.

Foxes will bark at it and shy away from it.

Bears get curious around it and may even tear it down (going to do a post on the "Broken Camera" shortly).

Turkeys. . well . . turkeys are a whole lot different around the camera.  27 out of 31 turkeys that have shown up on my camera do the exact same thing.

They realize the camera is there from a distance of about 3 to 15 meters away and will creep up towards it. It's not a straight walk to the camera though, it's a time consuming trot that takes the turkey on a winding path to the front of camera until I get a picture like this, where the animal is comfortably close:

Winding back and forth from 2 to 6 times, the turkey makes a lot of switchbacks until it gets right up to the camera. It will go from left to right, onward past the camera, then back in front of the camera from right to left, over and over again.

The beast then stares the camera-trap right in the eye (lens), and then goes off to something else.

It's weird.   Is the turkey scared of the shiny object in the woods?  Is this what turkeys always do with predators, other turkeys, or metal boxes?  Is this what they always do when curious?  So many questions.

This camera has been set to its video mode so it can better record this behavior.  More results should pour in, in about 2 weeks.

Another camera about 30 miles from this one may be checked tomorrow.  The heat and humidity of Virginia this week has not stopped checking camera-traps yet.