Video clips from trail cameras in our yard - interesting what creatures roam thru the yard at night ! (or day)

GKL

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Since my question "Coyotes or Foxes" was answered on my previous trail camera thread I am starting a new thread to simply occasionally share some of the video clips the trail cameras I have in our yard capture.

Here is a link to the previous thread for those who might not yet have seen the video clips on that thread: https://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=291525

Okay, usually I try to add new video clips at least once a week, sometimes even twice a week, but been busy so these clips are some of the ones my trail cameras have captured over about the past 2 weeks. (I changed the time on the one trail camera today as I realized I was 12 hours off on it :lol:)

First I'll share what I think might be somewhat of the more interesting clips, followed by the more average clips.

NOTE: the 2 different trail cams are currently on different sides of our yard, you can tell the cams apart from the time stamp on the bottom, on one trail cam it is hard to see the time stamp on the other trail cam it is easy to see the time stamp because they included the black stripe to help it stand out from the background.

These first 2 clips were in order on the SD card one right after the other, but since the time stamp is hard to see with this trail cam I can't be sure how close together in time they were.

The reason I explain that is because the 1st clip shows a fox looking back over the weeds as if something is there, then runs off quickly.... then the next clip shows a coyote looking around and I'm wondering if that coyote is what that fox was looking back to see.
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These next 2 clips it seems the foxes are eating bugs, did not realize they did that.
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These next 2 clips I am wondering if they could be either an opossum or groundhog (or one of each) or something else. (any ideas ?)
(that is a popular trail, different animals like going down that path :lol:)
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Note: I mowed this area to better see the animals, so the clips showing it mowed was the week after the un-mowed clips.
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It's hard to see, but going by the movement I'm fairly sure this is very likely a rabbit.
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These next 2 clips have multiple foxes running in the same direction on 2 different nights, after getting the SD card and seeing these clips I moved this camera so it is facing the direction they are running from so maybe I'll get some clips of them face on coming towards the camera.
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I get quite a few clips of deer, both day and night, and usually only include a deer clip if it is particularly interesting, I'm sharing this one to show how occasionally the infrared night vision will capture any pollen in the air, extra heavy this night, almost looks like it's snowing :lol:
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Here are other more average videos

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You sure have a lot of foxes around, my game-cams seldom get video's of gray or red foxes for some reason, get a bobcat or yote occasionally...


I like seeing your pix/videos, thanx
 
Should be some interesting post on this. Not sure i want to know what is out there in the dark watching. :laughing:

......better to know then to have to go out there at night not knowing :shock: :laughing:

You sure have a lot of foxes around, my game-cams seldom get video's of gray or red foxes for some reason, get a bobcat or yote occasionally...

I like seeing your pix/videos, thanx

Thanks, I had been getting more coyote clips a short while back but just that one recently.

Have yet to get a bobcat, not sure if any stay close to this area, but I remember many years ago hearing a sound at night from the woods (we live next to woods) that sounded like a baby crying which I read could have been a bobcat, but maybe also could have just been a cat.

I knew we had a lot of deer around here as they will walk thru our yard day and night, but I didn't realize for sure we had foxes and coyotes actually coming thru the yard until I started using trail cameras in our yard, I told my wife we don't have to go to the zoo, the zoo comes to us :lol:
 
......better to know then to have to go out there at night not knowing :shock: :laughing:



Thanks, I had been getting more coyote clips a short while back but just that one recently.

Have yet to get a bobcat, not sure if any stay close to this area, but I remember many years ago hearing a sound at night from the woods (we live next to woods) that sounded like a baby crying which I read could have been a bobcat, but maybe also could have just been a cat.

I knew we had a lot of deer around here as they will walk thru our yard day and night, but I didn't realize for sure we had foxes and coyotes actually coming thru the yard until I started using trail cameras in our yard, I told my wife we don't have to go to the zoo, the zoo comes to us :lol:

My dog often gets in a staring match with something up the hill and around my peach trees , i keep him on a short leash out there when it is that dark, going to put in some new solar lights back there. Probably possums after some of the peaches or tomatoes .
 
here are 2 pix's of bobcats here in Missouri, not in our yard but in a field to the back of the house, maybe 300 yards. I've heard them scream and they sound like a woman screaming. It'll scare you LOL
 

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My dog often gets in a staring match with something up the hill and around my peach trees , i keep him on a short leash out there when it is that dark, going to put in some new solar lights back there. Probably possums after some of the peaches or tomatoes .

That's smart, when I take my dog out to potty at night she is in a harness and on a leash for her own safety to protect her from her own bravery as she acts like she would chase after the deer if she could, she don't like other critters trespassing on her domain :lol:

The one before the rabbit is definitely an oppossum! Funny the way they move!:laughing::laughing:

Thanks, appreciate the ID on one of the visiting "zoo members" being an oppossum :lol: I wonder what the lighter shaded one before that one was :?:

Nice vids!

Thanks ! Hope to add a few new ones at least once a week unless it's an extra busy week that week.

here are 2 pix's of bobcats here in Missouri, not in our yard but in a field to the back of the house, maybe 300 yards. I've heard them scream and they sound like a woman screaming. It'll scare you LOL

Neat pics !!!! So they also roam around in the daytime, interesting !

Now that you mentioned how it sounded I think what I heard years ago just "might" have been a bobcat as I somewhat remember it sounded eerie, but I haven't heard anything like that since so it could have been one who just happened to roam to our area back then but normally does not stay in this area.
 
Very interesting and entertaining, Gary. Thanks for posting those. I presume these are motion-activated video clips. Is there a sensitivity setting for the cameras? How far from your house are these critters hanging out?
 
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Very interesting and entertaining, Gary. Thanks for posting those. I presume these are motion-activated video clips. Is there a sensitivity setting for the cameras? How far from your house are these critters hanging out?

Thanks Jim !

Yes, they are regular trail cams (inexpensive ones) that are motion sensitive.

The motion sensitivity levels help if the cam is pointed in a direction where the wind might easily move branches and shrubs, you don't want to have it so sensitive that it records the slightest movement of vegetation and have clips with nothing but moving vegetation :lol:

I did some research and from what I read as far as the delay in recording to where the animal might be in the center of the field of view before the recording starts that delay seems to be from the time it take the recording software to activate after motion is detected, perhaps the more expensive trail cams "might" be better with that, but I was not wanting to spend a bunch of money for a trail cam just to capture critters running thru my yard :lol:

I actually like my older trail camera better than the newer one (the newer one is the one that has an easier to see time stamp). The infrared night vision on the older one seems to light up a wider area than the newer one and while I wish the time stamp on the older one was easier to see, having a wider area lighted up at night is more important to me.

The newer one was actually sent to me free by the company, they had emailed me and asked how I liked the older model and I said overall it was okay with the exception of how an animal could be in the center of the field of view before the recording started and they offered to send me the newer model for free (and still keep the older model) and while I really appreciated their great customer service, the newer model still had the same delay issue, but I'm not complaining, at least I got a free cam which I didn't even have to ask for, they offered it.

If you notice the video clips I post are in the animated GIF format, I convert it to that from the regular video format the trail cam captures it as, I do that so they play over and over in a loop automatically, and then I also realized I could shorten some of the clips that had blank video after the animal went out of the field of view so you would not have to see much blank video while waiting for it to loop again.

The newer model cam also records audio, but the audio part is not available when it is converted into the animated GIF format. (but I can listen to the original clips to hear if there are any sounds)

So you wanted to know how far from the house are these critters hanging out ?

Well I went outside real quick and walked off a rough estimate of the distance as well as took some pics. Now I won't know if these critters come any closer to the house until I try moving the trail cams to where they cover an area closer to the house, but as far as where the cams have been capturing at their current locations:

The cam I have out back (the older model) is roughly about 35 feet from the back of the house and is facing the woods, so the critters are roughly about 40 feet from the house when they are captured on the video out back.

The newer model cam is roughly about 60-65 feet off the side of our house, I originally had that one facing the woods on that side, but moved it this week so it faces the other direction in hopes of catching a face-on view of the foxes running into the woods on that side.

The back camera is way way inside our property boundaries, the camera on the side is not far from where the property line runs on that side of our yard, so these critters are actually running onto our property as well as back off again.

I'll also include some pics pointing towards the back of our property, our property line in the back actually goes roughly about 25-30 yards back into the woods (might be further, or maybe less, been a while since I measured it) but I had previously found the 4 poles in the ground that mark the corners of our property so I can tell how far back we own the property when I want to check it.

(when the weather gets cooler I need to cut down a bunch of those small trees and use a push mower to trim down the high weeds/shrubs, I'd like to clear it out to our property line with the exception of the larger trees)

(I plan to move the trail cams to different locations occasionally, I'd like to move the back one temporarily further back toward the woods to see what direction the animals go after they run down that path :lol:)

(this cam about 35 feet from the back of our house, more towards the left side of the back of the house)
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(this cam roughly about 60-65 feet off the right side of our house)
Just moved this cam this week so next batch of clips should include ones showing animals captured from this direction.
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same as above but pic taken from further back
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next 3 pics are views facing the back of our property
(lots of good exercise when I start clearing out the small trees and weeds/shrubs :lol:)
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can't see it in this pic but further back in the woods is the pole showing that corner of our property line
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Wow... excellent explanation of your setup and and answers to my earlier questions, Gary. I was wondering about the video clips and what file size this forum allows you to post. Trimming out the parts where no activity is happening, and converting to GIF's must help to keep file sizes down.

Very nice of you to include the color daytime photos of the trail cam positions in your yard along with supplemental details. I hope others appreciated that as much as I have.

On a similar subject, but in an audio, versus video wildlife recording theme, I have made a couple of recordings of coyotes in my neighborhood. They were made with the Voice Recorder APP on my iPhone in December and in February. February's recording was of a coyote at 3 in the morning, on the street corner, right outside our bedroom, at the top of our driveway; so, very close to our house. There's me, at the bedroom window, with my phone's microphone aimed at "Wiley". It was howling to another coyote, maybe one street over, and you can hear the second one howling back. A minute later, the second one joins the one near our house and they both go trotting up the hill, in the center of the street (no car traffic to worry about). That particular recording was a minute and 46 seconds long, with silent gaps between the howls. I figured out how to edit a voice recording in the APP and also how to "SHARE" it by text or email. The result was a 39 second recording and more interesting to hear the interaction between the two coyotes. By the way, we live within the city limits of Boston, though in a more suburban setting. We routinely see coyotes at any hour of the day in the neighborhood, as well as fox, rabbits, skunk, woodchucks, and of course the usual common stuff like squirrels, chipmunks, etc. We even were surprised to see an 8-point buck in our backyard a couple of years ago, though deer are pretty common in wooded areas in adjacent towns only a couple of miles away.

Thanks again Gary for taking the time to share those details.

Jim
 
Wow... excellent explanation of your setup and and answers to my earlier questions, Gary. I was wondering about the video clips and what file size this forum allows you to post. Trimming out the parts where no activity is happening, and converting to GIF's must help to keep file sizes down.

Very nice of you to include the color daytime photos of the trail cam positions in your yard along with supplemental details. I hope others appreciated that as much as I have.

On a similar subject, but in an audio, versus video wildlife recording theme, I have made a couple of recordings of coyotes in my neighborhood. They were made with the Voice Recorder APP on my iPhone in December and in February. February's recording was of a coyote at 3 in the morning, on the street corner, right outside our bedroom, at the top of our driveway; so, very close to our house. There's me, at the bedroom window, with my phone's microphone aimed at "Wiley". It was howling to another coyote, maybe one street over, and you can hear the second one howling back. A minute later, the second one joins the one near our house and they both go trotting up the hill, in the center of the street (no car traffic to worry about). That particular recording was a minute and 46 seconds long, with silent gaps between the howls. I figured out how to edit a voice recording in the APP and also how to "SHARE" it by text or email. The result was a 39 second recording and more interesting to hear the interaction between the two coyotes. By the way, we live within the city limits of Boston, though in a more suburban setting. We routinely see coyotes at any hour of the day in the neighborhood, as well as fox, rabbits, skunk, woodchucks, and of course the usual common stuff like squirrels, chipmunks, etc. We even were surprised to see an 8-point buck in our backyard a couple of years ago, though deer are pretty common in wooded areas in adjacent towns only a couple of miles away.

Thanks again Gary for taking the time to share those details.

Jim

No problem Jim, glad to explain how I did stuff.

Actually the forum limit for GIF size is small enough that even trimming out the blank parts of the videos would not make them small enough to upload to the forum, I edit out the blank parts simply to avoid having to wait thru the blank part before the video loops to the start again.

I actually upload the animated GIFs to a free hosting web site that gives you the code for adding access to the clip to a forum, that way since the GIF itself is not uploaded to the forum the size of the GIF is not a factor.

I use this free online program to convert the videos to animated GIFs:

https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif

(after I convert to gif I "right click" on the gif and choose "save image as" to download to my computer)

(if the video I want to convert is larger than the size limit of the above program I use a free video cutter program to edit out the blank parts first before converting to an animated GIF, but I also have simply decided to edit out the blank parts first before converting the video regardless of the size)

Then I add the gif to this free site and use it to get the code I paste on the forum to show the gif:

https://imgur.com/

(that enables larger gifs to be used on the forum since the gif itself is not uploaded to the forum)

Neat experience you had recording the coyotes "talking" ! :lol:

It has been a while since I actually heard any "yipping" sounds around here, and only would hear it very occasionally in the past. The last time I heard the yipping at night I went to get my phone to record it but by the time I was ready to record they stopped :lol: I think I remember another member saying before that both coyotes and foxes can make "yipping" sounds so I'm not sure which I heard and how easy it is to tell the difference or if they sound about the same.

I'll have to remember to listen to the audio on the newer model trail cam clips to hear if it captured any yipping while I was sleeping at night :lol:

(I just did a quick online search and just a quick glance shows there might be some free hosting sites for audio files where you can just get a link to post on a forum to click on to hear the audio, don't have time to research it right now but if I get any interesting animal audio I can research how to add it to a post if I don't research it ahead of time)
 
Okay, some of the video clips captured since the last time I added some.

These clips are all only from the older model camera I have in the back, the newer model camera on the side of the property did not capture any foxes or coyotes but a lot of deer clips (I usually only post deer clips if they are somewhat unusual or extra cute) anyhow I was somewhat disappointed as I had positioned the side camera to face the direction the foxes in some previous clips were coming from as I had hoped to catch some fox clips face on approaching the camera. So I positioned the camera in yet a different position so we'll see what I capture from that direction. :lol:

I had planned to include a neat deer clip captured on the camera out back as it showed a deer doing a hopping run, thought it looked neat, but when I went to convert it to an animated GIF I was not able to find it. (if I later find it I can add it to another post)

Okay, here are some of the recent clips from the camera out back:

Let's talk turkey ! :laughing:
(we've seen turkeys very rarely on our property in the past but this is the first in a long time)
(also notice the time stamp is easier to see in the daytime on this older model)
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....and baby turkey following ? :lol:
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Perhaps the coyote saw the dim red glow of the infrared on the camera ?
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I think that might be the first time I remember seeing a coyote going in that direction
(seems they usually go to the right or travel that path in or out of the woods)
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fox running
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another fox clip
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looks like an opossum again ?
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Don't usually include deer clips unless they are somewhat unusual or extra cute but added this clip because I simply wanted to show that they go down that same path out back that the other critters often go :lol:
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These clips were pulled from the trail camera SD cards on 9-10-2021 but I didn't have time to post them right away.

Not many clips worth posting this time, but a few neat ones nonetheless, the newer model trail camera on the side of our property which I had moved to a new position facing west did not have any nighttime clips so after switching out the SD on the 10th I moved it back to facing east, it did have one daytime clip I thought was neat enough to post though.

The trail camera in the back got a little closer view of a coyote then what the camera usually captures as they are usually back a little further when they activate the motion sensor.
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I'm including this deer clip from the camera in the back because it's been very rare to see one with antlers walking thru our yard
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I included this one from the trail camera on the side of our property because when I saw it it reminded me of the 1963 movie "The Birds" :laughing:

.....notice how the birds in the background all march forward at about the same time after seeming to take a cue from the "leader" bird in the foreground moving forward :laughing:
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I love Game Cameras, these are really good.



Do you ever get trespassers? I've had cam's out for years & my cam's never have? I see evidence tho, like tracks etc, no cam's stolen, 2 had no video after a week, figured a guy did't shoot or steal SD cards or steal but deleted them. Whewwww
 
I love Game Cameras, these are really good.

Do you ever get trespassers? I've had cam's out for years & my cam's never have? I see evidence tho, like tracks etc, no cam's stolen, 2 had no video after a week, figured a guy did't shoot or steal SD cards or steal but deleted them. Whewwww

Thanks !
(someone deleted your SD cards and put them back ? puzzling :?: you might need hidden cameras facing those cameras to catch what happens)

No two-legged trespassers, (except the birds :lol:) but in addition to the trail cameras we also have security cameras covering areas around our property, some of which are motion sensitive and will record a video clip as well as send an alert to my smartphone where I can view the clip even when away from home and no trespassers on them either except the animals :lol: (I have gotten clips of delivery people dropping off packages)
 
These clips were pulled from the (out back) trail camera SD card yesterday 9-17-2021.

The camera on the side of the property did not have any night time clips for about the 2nd week in a row (and no exceptional day time clips this past week) so I am not posting any from that camera this time.

At first I was thinking maybe animals simply stopped going on that side of the property at night for now, but after researching online there is a possibility low battery power might have kept it from working at night, (I replaced the batteries today), but anyhow I had already went ahead yesterday and moved that camera to out back but further down the path the other camera captures clips from, so I can try to see if the animals that go down that path all continue on in the same direction into the woods, so hopefully the next time I check for clips on that camera it will reveal that info.

Anyhow, here are the newest clips from the trail camera out back.

Fox looking, maybe sees the infrared glow from the trail camera ?
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Haven't captured many coyote clips (as before) recently but did get this one
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Looks like a fox found a bug to eat
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animals like using that path !
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plenty of fox clips lately (there were 3 other average fox clips I didn't post)
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not sure what it is, but notice the glowing eyes around the center of the video :lol:
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not sure if this is the same deer as the last deer with antlers clip, but if so antlers have grown noticeably
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.....and here is a pic of where I moved the camera to from where it used to be on the side of the property, after taking the pic I cut down 2 small trees that were close by. (after a while I likely might move it back to the side of the property again)
(NOTE: I still have the original out back trail camera in the same position capturing clips around the top of that path)
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