Saturday 21 April 2012

A Mammal That Isn't On the Payroll

Back in December I wrote a post about the wildlife camera that Mark got me for Christmas. Very cool, but as I reported then, all I had managed to capture so far was my wonderful guard dog napping in the sun.


Before I left for Alaska I positioned the camera along a well used game trail just outside our gates. When I got home I checked it to find that all I captured with trees blowing in the wind (it is motion activated) until the batteries died. *sigh*

When we had unloaded the the truck after arriving home there was some meat in it that was rather questionable. Usually we just pitch meat like that far out in the woods for the wildlife to clean up, but this time decided to use the meat to 'bait' the game camera!!!
We choose a spot far enough from home to hopefully deter Cricket but still on our property, put out our stinky old meat and waited.

The next day we headed out to see what the camera had captured....



What we got was ravens....


....lots of ravens...


...and this...


...which we determined to be an immature bald eagle.


Cool!!! Encouraged by that success the next day we baited the site with a 40-lb block of chicken skins (it was old and needed to be 'disposed' of anyway) before I had to head to Calgary to drop Richard off. Once I got home I headed out and found that the block had been picked at a bit, but nothing else. Sadly, I had aimed the camera badly and got no image of what had been 'picking'. I repositioned the camera and waited a few days.
When I got out there I was rather surprised to have the whole block gone (it had been secured to the ground with a crowbar). I couldn't wait to see what had taken it but I was horribly disappointed to find that the memory card on the camera wasn't working!!!!! Bummer!!!!! I changed cards and hoped that whatever had taken the block might come back to check things out again.

This morning I had some really rank fish and some leftover chicken that I needed to dump, so I went out to bait the camera, change batteries and clear the card. When I checked the memory card at first all I saw was ravens.....



...I like ravens an awful lot, but enough with them....and then there was....


...a mammal that isn't on the NorthWapiti payroll!!! Wahoo!!!! There were actually three or four coyote images on the camera this time.....


I can't wait to see what the camera shows tomorrow!!!!

Karen

4 comments:

Ricki said...

That's a great coat on the night shot of the coyote! The ones around our place have such big kahunas they trot across the front yard during the day to let me know who REALLY owns the place...We've gotten some great shots with our game camera of cougar that hang out by our creek, but I am waiting for that black bear to get his photo snapped!

Cathy Galuska-Seidel said...

Those are big coyotes!

granimar said...

Karen, those are great photos. I'm really interested in your camera. What kind is it? The photos make it look like what I've been interested in. This summer we're supposed to take a n ATV trip across 100 miles of primitive road between 2 wilderness areas. It's the McGruder trail and my youngest son and his family are flying out to take it with us. [It only sounds a little less daunting than the Whitewater trip last year. My 80 year old body is telling me that if I'm "gonna", I'd better get with it. [That's 100 miles each way !!!]. I really want the camera for the yeard traffic, but think it will be neat to have on the McGruder Trail. :-)

granimar said...
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