Technical Difficulties

The best camera trap photo opportunities sometimes seem to vanish with either technical difficulties or "user error".  By "user error", I mean the fact that sometimes I forget to reset cameras or even forget to turn them on at all.  I'm just human.  Mistakes happen.

This little mistake though is one that I cannot figure out yet.  I'm unsure if it is a memory card problem, "me problem", computer problem, or a camera trap problem.  I need to look more into it.

When viewing the images, only a portion of each image shows.  The rest of the picture seems to be sort of blurred out with a single color.  It's odd and I cannot figure it out.

Here are some examples.

Although I find these pictures fascinating and I can add the species to my data tables, they are not exactly the "perfect pictures" that I was hoping for.

That's the way it goes sometimes.  There's always somethin'.

I'm happy with those coyote pictures though.  At least they made it to the blog!

New Dens

Newly dug fox hole.

The better part of this afternoon was spent working and scouting locations for where I should put up camera traps next.

Through some dense brush and "the thick stuff", I stumbled across a new den site, of the fox variety.

One impressive entrance hole was made deep into the little berm where the dens were being made.  An exit hole was only just beginning though, and was no more than 3 days old.

Hopefully we'll be seeing some fox kits within the next two months.

Camera traps will tell us all this though, but for now, I'm going to stay away from this den so I do not disturb the animals that are building it.

Last year brought some incredible results from fox dens that not only helped estimate the canid population, but gave me a great opportunity to educate the public on what some cute northern Virginia baby foxes looked like.

See the link here to view some results from last year's red fox den and its activity:
Red Fox Kits 2014

There's no telling what will happen though.  Time will tell, and that is the beauty of all this.

Partially dug out exit or entrance hole to a new fox den.