Wildlife Camera

It is hard to believe that we have been living here on our farm for almost 3 years! I grew up in the "woods" in southern Arkansas and was looking forward to being back in the "country" after living in town for 25 years. Granted the forests of southern Arkansas and the open country of northern Oklahoma are quite different. But country is country and I'll take either one.

I don't think I fully appreciated the quiet beauty that country living offers back when I was growing up. So, I was excited about moving out here to the farm, and I had visions of looking out our windows to see raccoon, coyotes, deer and all sorts of wildlife everyday. Turns out we don't see too much wildlife, but see "signs" of where they have been, like deer tracks in the garden and holes dug in the yard by armadillos during the night. We occasionally hear coyotes, but never see them.

Not to be outdone, I decided we needed a wildlife camera. So, for my Christmas present that first year we lived here, Tom bought me a Moultrie wildlife camera. Here is a picture of it.

It is housed in a weatherproof box that can be left outside day and night and in all kinds of weather. It is motion-activated and has an infra-red flash so as not to scare the animals away at night. I've published a lot of pictures taken by the camera on this blog. So, you know how much fun we've had with it.

At first, we just hung it on a tree to see what animals came by. There were a lot pictures of birds and squirrels during the day, but not much at night. Then Tom decided to buy some "deer corn" and focus the camera on it. That did the trick and we started capturing pictures of raccoon, rabbits, possums, deer, our cat and an occasional coyote.

I have a feeling we may have to repair or replace the camera in the coming months. It has an LED screen you use to set the time, date, etc. But, it appears that this screen is going bad. Not surprising considering that it suffered through temperatures ranging from -27 degrees last winter to 110 degrees this past summer. From what I have read, trying to fix the camera may be more expensive than just buying a new one. For now, it is still taking pretty good pictures. So, I think we'll take a "wait and see" approach.