Thursday 13 August 2009

A Winter Clip and Something about Trail Cameras



This clip shows a young beaver, swimming across a feeding station. You can see some sticks from which the bark has been stripped, lying in the water. The camera was fixed in an alder tree and looked down onto the feeding station.

Beavers and most animals, in fact, notice the pink glow of the infra-red when the camera is triggered, and don't like it. An answer is to put the camera above their line of sight. The other thing that one has to beware of, and be patient about, is that any object such as a trail camera retains some human smell from being handled. Beavers are quickly aware of this and may avoid the vicinity of the camera until the stink of human has disappeared and they have become accustomed to its presence.

The reason why my more recent clips of video don't work on Blogger is that they come from a format that is not recognised by Blogger: no doubt they will be before long.

The clips of video that I took last winter with Trail Cameras, on the other hand, are AVIs and are recognised.

Trail cameras have their uses, the most spectacular of which is photographing animals that no one knew existed, or thought no longer existed, in a particular place. The ivory-billed woodpecker in Florida and some famous shots of snow leopards are cases in point.

They are useful, too, for carrying out censuses, their original purpose, I guess.




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