Adventures in Game Cams

So with all the wildlife I've been glimpsing around our home, I was super eager to find out what animals we might see at night or when we're not around being noisy stinky humans.  So my biggest desire for Christmas was a Game Cam.  I got two of them!  Heaven!  : )  I got to work putting them up here and there and bringing them in to see what I've "caught."
The vast majority of my pictures are set-up/take-down and us walking by.  It is too cold and wet to bring my computer out and just take the chip out to download the pics... maybe in the summer... so for now, I remove both cameras from their spots and then set them up again later that day.

This was surprising, as the camera was set out in the water, but the water froze and Cedar went out to investigate.

See the little Cedar face in this one?

Dave, Adventure Dog and I trying out Steve's boat!

Luckily, I am also capturing wildlife!  So far the night shots are a bit blurry, so I will need to read my manuals regarding what settings I should be using.  Sorry for the poor clarity on a lot of these. 
First I was just getting ducks:

"Peek-a-boo!" says a male wood duck.

We'll get you my pretty, and all other female ducks too!

And after all the ducks and all the 'didn't get anything this time' I was super stoked to get a squirrel.  I got his butt one day and then then his better side the next.

Then, just once, we got what we really really wanted to see... a beaver!  He is going by with a stick, but if you don't know what you're looking for it is a bit hard to tell.  We really would like to know if we have more than one. We want our beaver pond to have happy beavers in it, not lonely ones.

I also got a pic of a raccoon this week!  He is super hard to pick out, so I'm putting in a pic without him 1st, so you can see where there is something in the 2nd that there wasn't in the 1st.

Can you see him?  Just left of the middle vertically and almost right in the middle horizontally.. you can just see his face beyond the leaves (he is more faded than the leaves)

And last, but not least... the coyotes.  I got one where I was expecting beavers (near where the raccoon was), and the other(s) were on the woods trail right behind the house.  Hopefully I'll start catching some of these in better lighting so we can see them better!

This one looks like it's heading for an rift between dimensions.

These last two look like they were taken one after the other, but if you notice the time stamp, it was early in the morning on 2 consecutive nights.

And here is Cedar in the same exact spot the coyote was.  Kind of  eerie!

This has been really fun!  Hopefully with warmer weather and more light, there will be more animal activity!

Northwest Trek 7-6-14

Pets aren't allowed at Northwest Trek, so Dave and I had to leave Adventure Dog home for this adventure.  It was a beautiful hot sunshiny day and neither of us had ever been to Northwest Trek.  Despite the heat of the day, the parking lots and walkways are well-designed under existing forest, so we didn't overheat and we didn't come back to a furnace either.  We just completely enjoyed the experience!
With your admission to Northwest Trek, you get a "tram" ride included.  This is a 3 sectioned bus that takes you on a guided tour of the large hooved mammal section of the park.  Our guide, Mike, was super informative and I learned a lot about antlers and horns, behaviors of the hooved mammals there and history of the area.  We saw bison, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, deer and caribou.  This was a GREAT time of year to go, as most of these animals had babies at their sides (awwwww).  The hooved mammal we did not see was a moose.  Apparently the park has 3 of them, but they must have been forwarned how much I would love to see a moose and brought my camera, so they were all hiding.  Along the nearly hour long ride, we also saw Canada geese, a beaver and I glimpsed a weasel run across the road but missed the pair of trumpeter swans.  Here are some of the pictures of the deer, goats and sheep we saw.

Besides the tram ride animals, we spent a couple lovely hours meandering around viewing the various other northwest denizons' enclosures.  It did seem to get busier in the later afternoon, but this park was far far less crowded than the zoos usually are and I felt we were able to view the animals better as well. 
The other animals included black bear, brown bear, cougar (which we didn't see), lynx, coyotes, raccoons, fishers, beavers, otters, a wolverine, birds of prey, and wolves among others.  (sorry a couple of these are blurry)

 

 

 

 

This last picture is of a fisher who is being lured toward her 'holding area' with meat.  She was being lured there by the keepers who were then going to have to go in and retrieve someone's water bottle that was thrown or dropped in.  I was really impressed with all the staff I interacted with.   Even though there were several of them trying to solve the water bottle issue, they still took the time to explain the situation, answer people's questions and didn't mind that I was bobbing around in the way trying to get pictures and video.  There was another staff members feeding the beavers and she also answered my question about what they were being fed in a very friendly and thorough way. 

I was super excited to see a wolverine up close and completely charmed by this formidable animal.

I highly recommend Northwest Trek and will definitely go again!

Craft Island Revisited 3-16-13

Gray out, and a little drippy plus sleeping in a bit later than I expected kept us close by for hiking this Saturday.  Since we wanted to take both dogs, and leashless is more fun for them, we went to the Craft Island area.  This muddy choose-your-own-adventure area is fun in many ways, including the drive out.  It looks different at all times of year, and this time of year the surrounding farmland is full of flocks of swans and snow geese.

We don't always make it all the way to the green hill that is Craft Island, often thwarted by tricky canals and deep mud.  Today we made it though, and enjoyed the views of the area.

Going up the hill, there is a really thick fuzzy light colored moss.  I'm not sure what it is, but it looks really cool.  I don't recall ever seeing it anywhere else.  I know there is a spot of water on my lens.  It was raining off and on.

After enjoying the top of the island, we went down on the 'backside' of it, as the tide was out and we could walk all the way around it pretty much.  Junior and Cedar turned into puppies as they played on the beach.

Here is a view of Craft Island from the far side.

At the last bit, we had to work our way up and around a canal and Dave spotted this large beaver nearby!  We hadn't seen any here before and he was close so we got a nice look at him.