Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Critter cam update

When we've gotten any critter cam pictures at all lately, they've been a little disappointing. Things like...



half a coyote.

The fastest trigger speed is one second, which seems molasses-slow when you're dealing with wild animals. So we see a fair amount of empty frames and half-animals. (The newer model Cuddeback has a slightly faster trigger, I think.)



Sometimes the critters captured are not wild, but still unexpected. Hmm, should Jasmine be that far from the house at night? (She's usually not. I know, because she's usually barking just under the bedroom window.)



Maybe she's made some new friends. She chases stray dogs away during the day, but is she having secret midnight rendezvous?



Then this showed up! I knew armadillos had moved into north Alabama, because I'd seen one on the driveway last year. (Well, that and the 10,000 roadkill carcasses.) But only lately have we noticed quite so many small holes dug everywhere. I was thinking skunk (a critter cam no-show so far), but after catching this picture in the area of maximum hole-digging, I'm ready to assign blame to this guy.

Just another reason to have a yard rather than an actual lawn!

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Nine-banded armadillo, (Dasypus novemcinctus).

Their rooting around doesn't bother me much, but according to the link above, evidence is mounting that they may be nest predators to ground-nesting birds.

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