More Trail Cam Imgaes

I gotta tell ya, this trail cam is the bomb! To be able to see what is roaming the far reaches of our property (all five acres of it!) without having to sit in a blind is wonderful.

At a show in early July, a kettle corn vendor named Wolf Runner (no kidding, he's Native American, his wife's name is Bunny) brought us a bag of waste corn after the show. I dumped some of it in front of the trail cam and waited a week before I checked the card.

I was surprised how long it took for anyone other than the rabbits to discover the corn. The first image of something other than a rabbit was three nights after I dumped the corn, but I couldn't have been more excited by what I saw unless it had been a bear--a gray fox!

A gray fox nibbles on kettle corn

I had never seen one before, and while I still technically haven't, just to know we have them around is really neat. He showed up several times over the next week, often in the company of a raccoon, which I thought was really odd.

Much of the piles had been consumed by the time this doe and fawn came by. She is really ripped up, and I can only imagine what might have happened to her. Was she protecting her fawn from coyotes? Was she hit by a car? It's any one's guess, but we have not seen her since these images were made, either on the trail cam or in person. I've seen the fawn on a number of occasions so I imagine she is nearby but still I wonder.

Here's the same fawn the next day, sans doe.

Very late to the popcorn pile was this coyote, clearly skittish. This is the only shot we got of him.

 
We got a couple of nice images of the fox later on in the week. I have noticed a number of images where the animals are looking/listening off to the north east. Past these trees and shrubs that make up the corner of our property the land opens up to a natural gas pipeline easement that seems to serve as something of a corridor for animals moving through the woods. Could be he's about to have visitors.



 

Ten days later this little one made an appearance. I think this is a younger fawn than the one we saw before. There were also no images of this fawn with a doe.

Most recently, and one that brings me great joy, is this image of a wild turkey hen and her poults. I saw this family several weeks prior to this, on the hill in front of the small woods at the top corner of our property. The poults took to the air and flew up into the oaks while mom walked up the hill, keeping a close eye on me.

I read Joe Hutto's book Illumination in the Flatwoods over the winter, about his experience raising several clutches of wild turkeys.  Having raised several broods of chickens (we're working on one right now) this was very interesting reading. PBS Nature produced a documentary as well called My Life as  Turkey that you can watch here.  Wonderful stuff, and as with most Nature films, beautifully shot.

Gotta get that camera card back in the trail cam and see what other surprises await us!