It’s one thing to set up a bunch of camera traps, it’s yet another to filter your results. the camera traps detect movement so anything that passes in front of them will trigger a burst from the camera and a series of images to be included in the set that we have to sift through at a later date. As I said in the previous post, wild dogs like to use paths that humans and livestock use so it’s a given that there will be lots of pictures of farm vehicles and passing cows to wade through before we find any of dogs. There will also be a bunch of me and my vehicle passing through every morning, and some of me standing in front of the camera with a line trimmer. See, I need to keep the grass in front of the cameras trimmed so that it doesn’t wave about in the wind and trigger bursts of photos of, well, grass growing.
On Saturday the cows were in a different paddock so I drove down to the place where the westernmost of our traps is set up on a gate. The cows were on the far side so no chance of them triggering the cameras, but the three horses, Moxie, Marya, and Faye were in the same paddock as me. After coming over to me to investigate they wandered down to the gate, on the other side of which the cows were grazing. Right on cue, the camera picked up the horses’ movements and I watched the flash fire as it took a burst of photos. Of course this piqued the horses’ curiosity, especially that of Moxie. She was fascinated by the little camouflaged box and proceeded to sniff at it. Another series of flashes and Moxie was sold. She stood for what seemed an eternity in front of the camera as it fired burst upon burst of photos, filling the memory card with images of her nose. And she didn’t even bother to trim the grass in front of the camera while she was there!
Among Animals 