Dad's Camera Trap Set continues to produce...

I have posted a few entries regarding my Father's camera trapping adventures. He has had a particularly good run as you can see here. I spent the day with him yesterday. Mother Nature joined us with a nice gift of wet sticky snow, the first of the season. We had a nice day of hunting. My highlight was a nice red fox trotting by at about 40 yards in the fresh snow.  Dad decided he wanted to adjust the placement a little so the next batch will show a different angle. I took the opportunity to make two camera sets of my own. Anyway, we checked the camera and got a few nice photos:

Ten point buck
Photo by: Jack Van Niel, 10/11

1. Ten-pointer! This is one nice deer. There is one tine there that is pretty small, but I believe it is at least an inch and therefore "countable". There have been no shortages of buck photos from this set, but many have been yearlings with thin, narrow racks. But this guy has the look of an older deer. Some people believe that the number of points on the antlers can tell the age of the deer, but the diameter of the beams and the spread of the rack are much more reliable indicators of age. More on that in future posts.

Black Bears, Fremont, NY
Photo by: Jack Van Niel, 10/11

2. Black Bears: Ahhh..... a nice family scene here. But what do I have? Two siblings? A cub in the foreground and Mom in the back (The more I look at this photo, the more I am convinced that the bear in the back is larger and an adult)? I cannot say for for sure. If they are both cubs, Mom is probably just off camera someplace. Despite the size of that lead bear, it is a cub. Cubs in New York are most likely born in January and weigh less than a pound each. At this exact same spot in June, my father took these photos of a mother and cub. I cannot say for sure we are looking at the same bears. Regardless, the cub(s) in THIS photo were that small in June. Now, in October, cubs can weigh upwards of 100 pounds. They will den with or near Mom this winter and when they emerge in the spring, they will be yearlings. I am bringing my black bear management class down in two weeks for an optional field trip. Let's hope we have some black bear photos of our own to discover.

Nobody makes chocolate rabbits in THIS pose...

I posted here about a camera set my Dad has on his property. This past month has been unusually productive and I promised to share some photos.

Eastern cottontail
(Seneca Falls, NY 10/11)

Eastern cottontails move so fast it is hard to see exactly how their legs are positioned. Most people don't know that when they are running, their back legs actually extend in front of their front legs. I just got back from checking my two cameras and got this nice photo of a rabbit in a classic body scissor position. Imagine now that you are looking at its tracks in the snow. The front tracks would be smaller and close together while the rear feet would be larger and set farther apart. And remember, the front tracks will be behind the rear tracks.

Eastern cottontail
(Fremont, NY 9/2011)

This is my new favorite eastern cottontail photograph. I man, how cool is this? Look at the extension of those back legs... I can't get over the idea that he is laid out on some sort of invisible table :) These are the times I wish I had video...

An apple a day...

As mentioned in a previous post, I just received over 300 photos from my Father's camera trap in Wayland, NY. Since the camera was set under an apple tree, there are plenty of deer photos. These four tell an interesting story:

Doe and fawn
Photo by: Jack Van Niel
(Wayland, NY 9/2011)

In this first photo, you can see a doe and her fawn with their heads together. But with that trunk in the way, I just couldn't tell what was going on. There is a large amount of contact between does and fawns so this could have been lots of things. My best guess however was that they were eating apples or maybe some of the acorns Dad had also spread around.

Doe and fawn eating apple
Photo by: Jack Van Niel
(Wayland, NY 9/2011)

This second photo helps tell what may have been happening in the last image. What is happening? Is this a photo of two deer that just happen to be vying for the same piece of food? Is mom trying to take this from the fawn or is the fawn trying to take this from mom? My Father asked: Is the doe teaching the fawn that apples are good to eat? In the end, I do not know. A quick (and I do mean quick!) search of my references did not produce anything to support that theory. But I didn't find anything to reject that theory either :)

Doe and fawn
Photo by: Jack Van Niel
(Wayland, NY 9/2011)

Photo number three shows that the apple is now gone. But who got it? If mom was trying for it, did she manage to "steal" it away from her fawn? Is that an apple tucked into mom's left cheek? Is the fawn sniffing out a consolation prize? I have heard anecdotal stories that deer at feeding stations have a "take no prisoners" attitude when it comes to food.  But that photo above looks for all the world like a mother gently teaching her offspring the ways of the world, at least the ways of apples. So, who got the apple? I think I know...

Fawn
Photo by: Jack Van Niel
(Wayland, NY 9/2011)

Although the time stamps have been cropped out of these photos, these were all taken in a very short period of time (camera was set for 30 second delay). In this last photo, the fawn is licking her chops... just as one would after eating a nice juicy apple... :) Is this proof that mom was teaching her fawn to forage for food? Heck no. It isn't even proof that the fawn got that apple. But we can speculate. I will file this observation away and hope that more evidence will present itself in time...

Why I Love Camera Trapping!

For a while now, I have wanted to write a post describing what it is about camera traps that make them so enjoyable, so entertaining, so useful and so addicting. I have always hesitated because I have a hard time putting it all into words. Sure, there are some obvious things to say. Pulling the memory cards IS like Christmas morning. Even when there are only a few images, one never knows what one will find! Yes, the excitement of the 'hunt" drives me, however it seems to becoming more than that. I also should say something like "Camera trapping is part art and part science". I am still not sure I am going to form a cohesive post but after my parents visited yesterday, I thought I could finally give it a try...

Black bear
(Wayland, NY 9/2011)

My father owns 80 acres of land in Wayland, NY. He bought it primarily as a place to deer hunt. I was 12 when he bought it and having a place to wander and explore nature was life changing for me. I do not believe I would have chosen the career path I did if he never bought it. Dad has two Cuddeback Capture cameras and sets them out for weeks at a time. My parents came over yesterday and brought one SD card that had been out for about a month (8/26 -9/24, 2011) and contained 349 photos. The camera trap was set facing an old apple tree. As if that were not enough, Dad spread out a bag full of acorns he had collected last fall on the golf course. The results were fantastic! He captured images of seven species of mammals (including a single shot of black bear and five different bucks) and two species of birds. Their were several interesting aspects of natural history documented including shots of particular gaits, interspecies competition as well as cooperation, molt, parasite loads and antler development.

Raccoon eating acorn
(Wayland, NY 9/2011)

It was a rush looking through my Dad's photos, not just to see the animals but to discover what stories the images had to tell. It is this interpreting that I enjoy the most. As a teacher, one of my primary goals is to make natural history accessible and understandable to my students. One way to do that is to teach them to make connections themselves (to paraphrase a parable, it is my version of teaching them to fish rather than giving them a fish). I find that increasingly I am talking about camera trap photos as data and asking students to draw conclusions about them. I am pushing them to consider how the images from, let's say, an entire week fit together to tell a story. We are paying more attention to dates and times to discover patterns. Part of my enjoyment stems from watching my students catch the camera trap bug too.

White-tailed deer, male
(Wayland, NY 9/2011)

Over the next several weeks, I will use my father's photos to tell several stories. You will see how (and when) deer change their color, when fawns lose their spots and watch a pair of antlers go from warm and fuzzy to cold and pointy. I will post the oddest eastern cottontail pose I have yet to see and we will watch raccoons by the handful and a mother deer with her fawn vying for apples. I condensed the 300-odd photos down to a manageable 30-something and wonder what I will find when I go back for a second (or third) look. And as I was looking over so many deer photos, I was struck by the idea that I was evolving in my camera trapping much the way hunters do. I found this website that succinctly describes the five stages: Shooting (success = shooting game), Limiting-out (success = taking as much as the law allows), Selective (success = taking game of a certain quality), Method (success = taking game by more challenging methods), and Philosopher (success = sharing your knowledge, etc). Often, this journey is non-linear and I feel as if I am straddling a few of those stages right now. But the point is that camera trapping is so fascinating to me because of its complexity. I have many students that come to me with camera trapping experience that is limited to only using the cameras to scout for deer. I push them to think of these things as professional tools that can be an important part of their education. For me, this has only added to the value of the photos themselves. Stay tuned for more lessons from this batch of photos, as promised...