Post #5 Trail Camera Photos

In addition to the camera in the nest box, we also have a Moultrie M Series trail camera, which Pat turns on around dark. It’s mounted on a tripod on our deck. This camera is motion activated and takes pictures with an invisible, infrared flash at night. The resulting photos are in black and white, but that’s good enough for this purpose. We just want to see who is moving, when and where. As you can see from the one photo taken around sunrise below, you get color photos when there is adequate light. There are a variety of settings, which I won’t go into here, except that we have all indicator lights turned off. Having the date and time stamped right on the photo is another essential feature.

The first photo shown here was taken on March 22, 2020. You can clearly see the reflected light in the eyes of the female emerging from the nest box and from those of the male perched to the left side on a large tree branch. This was 5 days prior to the first egg.

The second photo, taken April 3, shows the infrared glow from the camera in the nest box, and a bird perched to the left on the branch. We assume this was triggered by the female flying out of the box, but she apparently got behind the trunk before the camera tripped. Owls cannot see infrared, so that’s why it’s used in both of these types of cameras. She had 3 eggs as of this date.

The final photo was taken on April 5 at 08:33 (8:33 am). Sunrise was at 07:18. You can see the female peeking out of the occupied nest box, so apparently something she did tripped the camera. These photos get more interesting as the young start to emerge from the box and perch nearby. We also hope to get interesting shots of adults delivering food to the young at that stage.