Camera Trap Results

I retrieved the photos from the camera traps after the first three days of trapping, and I have to say the results are encouraging.

First, only one camera of the eight was too crooked to capture what it needed to. It was tilted such that it was aimed too high, which I discovered when I downloaded a lot of photos of animals' backs and this photo:


Very entertaining, but I really need to be able to photograph animals without them having to stand on their tippy toes. I returned to this camera and lowered it, so hopefully that helps.

Second, I got a wide variety of species: 11 in only three days at 8 cameras. I of course got tommies as well as loads of zebra,

impala,
and warthog.
Rarer captures included giraffe,
Grant's gazelles,
and spotted hyenas (which thankfully did not try to snack on the cameras - a concern even despite the steel casing).
I also got one shot each of cheetah,
white-tailed mongoose,
and a super cool striped hyena, which tends to be a very elusive creature.

In addition to all the wild species, I got more than my share of photos of cattle and sheep. Even some curious cattle herders made an appearance:

Despite all the attention, no cameras were knocked over, mauled, stolen, or otherwise tampered with, which is very encouraging. Tomorrow I will put the remaining two traps out, move a couple around, and hopefully collect some more cool photos to share with you!

Smile for the Camera!

Yesterday I put eight of my ten camera traps up. The camera traps are intended to give me an idea of the relative activity levels of different predator species in the habitats used by my tommies. As I said in an earlier post, mother tommies’ behavior should vary according to the predator assembly they are dealing with: if there are lots of large predators mothers should prioritize their own safety, but if there are many small predators mothers might spend more time and energy protecting their offspring.


The camera traps are Scoutguard SG550s ($200.00 retail if you want to put one up in your back yard). They are triggered by heat and movement. I have them set so that when they are triggered they take two photos in rapid succession. Then they reset and cannot be triggered for 30 seconds. Hopefully these settings will strike the right balance so that I am getting good photos of my predators without filling up the memory cards when a herd of zebras or cows decides to camp out around it. We’ll see.

Putting the traps up was hard work. I had the steel casings equipped with hardware so that I could mount them on steel poles that I would hammer into the ground. Problem: the ground is hard and I have the arm strength of an infant. The hammering was probably pretty comical. The poles also tended to go slanted if I stopped steadying them with my left hand, which was inevitable because my right arm was spent after about three and a half swings so I always ended up switching to a two-handed pounding approach. I imagine I looked a lot like some primitive and mentally-impaired primate, only less adept:

Blairopithecus hard at work

Most of the poles ended up pretty cock-eyed, but still vaguely oriented to an area where animals might walk.

I think the angle will give the photos an artsy feel

The four that I saw today were still upright also, so that’s a good sign.

Before I left I tested the cameras in the office and in my back yard. I leave you with a couple photos from the tests. Hopefully by my next post I’ll have some more exotic photos to show off. Come on, aardvark!