Walking Forum
Main Boards => Photography => Topic started by: MarkT on 21:29:30, 30/10/20
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Has anyone got any experience of night camera traps?
After watching various wildlife programmes and often seeing night time footage or pictures of what happens at night in the woods, I was thinking I might want to try myself as I live near a country park with various wildlife living in it.
Looking on amazon you can get a suitable camera for under £100. I'm not asking for recommendations but just wandered if anyone else has bought one and had any success?
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i got a cheap (£30.00) trail camera back at the start of the lockdown to give me something to do and it quickly became quite addictive. It goes out in our suburban garden every night and I have never had a night without something to watch. The quality is not great but a bit of work with video editing software tidies things up a lot. I use Cyberlink Power Director and Colour Director but there are plenty of free alternatives if you do not want to spend a lot. Results have been great considering how cheap the camera was. This is an example:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyzr2GVpIl0&ab_channel=AndyBrown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyzr2GVpIl0&ab_channel=AndyBrown)
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Yes, I successfully used one at the beginning of this month. I've been feeding foxes in my back garden for a few years but both my wife and I recently saw a badger on separate occasions. This is quite remarkable considering we are in the suburbs well away from the countryside. The animal has taken over a disused foxes den close to the foot of my garden, from where it has access to a large grass area for earthworms in the grounds of a clubhouse.
So one of my sons borrowed a track cam from a wildlife trust volunteer he knows, and I fastened this to a clothes post with thick-rubber coated garden tying wire. The camera contains a large number, I can't remember now how many, of rechargeable AA batteries and it was just a matter of switching it on. You have to open the front of the cam for the switch, and I had been warned not to open the front too far because the wires go through the hinge. The cam came with a dual-purpose usb cable for charging and for connecting to a pc, but when I was ready I just pulled the sd card out and put it in my laptop. Similar cams are around £40+ on Amazon.
In just one night it recorded 104 video clips, starting with a squirrel at dusk and ending with a cat in the morning. Apart from an old man shuffling past and scattering dry dog food, cough, cough, the rest were mostly foxes but also the badger. The foxes were around from dusk tilll 20:00, the badger from 12:00 to 01:00, and then the foxes were back from 05:00 till 08:00.
The video clips are very short, b&w of course, with the time and date displayed, and they are in .avi format. Some of the people I sent them to couldn't play them on their phones, so I used online converters to change them to .mp4 and compress them.
It was a fun experiment but you will note that I only used it for one night, I saw all I wanted to in those 104 clips. I really think the novelty wouldn't take long to wear off, and for that reason I won't buy one.
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Great footage Andy, the fox and badger are brilliant O0
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I might need to get a few of these. We have red squirrels in the trees at the back of the garden and occasionally on bird feeders. We feed some feral cats. They kindly share their food with various bird species, a fox, hedgehogs and sometimes a badger. One of my neighbours claims to have seen a pine marten at the rear of his garden and we have had a few roe deer on the lawn. It would be interesting to see what turns up when the sun goes down.
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Have bought my mom one of these for christmas, she enjoys her photography, so it adds a different element to that hobby of hers. Sounds quite promising from reading the posts on here.
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i got a cheap (£30.00) trail camera back at the start of the lockdown to give me something to do and it quickly became quite addictive. It goes out in our suburban garden every night and I have never had a night without something to watch. The quality is not great but a bit of work with video editing software tidies things up a lot. I use Cyberlink Power Director and Colour Director but there are plenty of free alternatives if you do not want to spend a lot. Results have been great considering how cheap the camera was. This is an example:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyzr2GVpIl0&ab_channel=AndyBrown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyzr2GVpIl0&ab_channel=AndyBrown)
Great footage! So cool to see the pecking order. The Badger is King. They are known to kill hedgehogs with their sharp claws and they would defeat the fox too.
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Santa did give me a night camera trap for Christmas and since then have had a few tries. First of all in the back garden getting a few birds. Then took it to my local country park. A nice 20 minute walk in the late afternoon before it gets dark and then returning at sunrise.
(https://i.postimg.cc/xdq9Qgh3/DSCF0042.jpg)
Ignore date and time, as the clock is running very fast. This picture was actually taken Boxing day. Having to send camera back for replacement.
(https://i.postimg.cc/BvfC9wXd/Pigeon-Pic.jpg)
I had to crop the pigeon picture as I hadn't allowed for the sun glare in the background. I also decided to remove date and time on the camera as it was so wrong. Then after taking it to the Country Park I managed to get a fox or 2.
(https://i.postimg.cc/bvRwYsw-q/Fox6-Moment.jpg)
I scattered a small amount of dog food to attract the fox with some success. (I did seek permission from the Park Ranger before I did this and providing I didn't over feed or do this everyday, she was happy for me to do it. But she did stress, if the camera got stolen, it was not their responsibility)
(https://i.postimg.cc/BZh9S25h/FoxPic1.png)
They may not be the best quality of pictures, I may look at editing them but some of the videos I've captured are much better. However, I'm just really enjoying going out looking at potential new places to set the camera up. Then the feeling of going to retrieve it the next morning fills me with excitement.
If anyone thinking of getting one, do it. It combines my love of walking with photography and I don't have to stand around for hours waiting for the animals. The work is being done whilst I'm fast asleep.
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My son has a few hidden around his small farm. He has shire horses and likes to keep an eye on them so his are connected up to a wireless network that goes to a hard drive hidden in the stable and also to his phone. He has seen all sorts of wildlife and on one occasion, caught images of some lampers which is currently being used in a prosecution.
One thing to be aware of is that you cannot publish any identifying shots of humans, no matter what they are doing. If they are up to no good you can hand the footage over to the police. My son was told that even though he was using the cameras to watch his horses and lambs he should have put a camera in use notice at the entry gates to his fields that adjoin public rights of way.
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Still waiting to capture anything on the one i bought my mom. She is having an animal or other visit her garden as it keeps leaving "presents" on her lawn. Probably a fox but it must have a camera detector as its managed to keep its privacy so far.
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Thanks for the heads up Jimbob, I haven't captured any humans yet on camera but do have footage of a dog sniffing around an area where i captured a fox having a poo! If I was to get any human activity, I wouldn't publish it, maybe report it to the police or the ranger if they were up to no good as you suggest.
Still waiting to capture anything on the one i bought my mom. She is having an animal or other visit her garden as it keeps leaving "presents" on her lawn. Probably a fox but it must have a camera detector as its managed to keep its privacy so far.
I have tried putting my camera low to the ground around trees and higher up. with the lower position producing better results. I noticed after one attempt that the tree I was using to attach the camera was leaning back, so my camera was pointing slightly up. This meant any wildlife passing was going under the camera and didn't record anything. My camera apparently has a 120 degree view but doesnt state how high or low it captures. All part of the fun trying out different positions and different areas.
The local ranger also told me Badgers are in the woods but wouldn't say where but would be great if I managed to get one of those.
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It works well MarkT! It is really cool to see what is lurking around. I was thinking about buying a cameratrap myself but it has to wait a bit longer. (http://walkingforum.co.uk/Smileys/alive/smiley.gif)
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I think yours is working great now Mark, some good pictures for a start off. I'll mention your tip on angles to my mom and see if thats the trouble with the stealthy fox.
Birdman, im really surprised you havent got one already, love seeing the photos you put up on here they are absolutely superb.
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I think yours is working great now Mark, some good pictures for a start off. I'll mention your tip on angles to my mom and see if thats the trouble with the stealthy fox.
Birdman, im really surprised you havent got one already, love seeing the photos you put up on here they are absolutely superb.
Thanks! No camera traps yet, but some years ago I spent many hours monitoring the Blue Tits in my nestbox and recorded many videos and kept a blog about it. That blog was just intended as a personal archive, but one of the videos went viral on YouTube and got more than 11 million (!) views to date:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkwLgHGGzFw
That old Blue Tit blog is here: https://wildlifeinmygarden.blogspot.com/
I don't maintain it anymore but it is still a good archive
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i shall have a look at those later, i have a couple of camera boxes in my garden also, they are brilliant. Great watching the way the blue tits get rid of the 'waste' they create in little parcels, clever creatures they are.
One of my time fillers during shielding lockdown has been making normal birdboxes, i have 37 up in the garden at the moment which have attracted flocks of sparrows, but have given twice that number away.
I need Boris to let me out soon!
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CWP, do the boxes encourage the small birds to nest?
We have a growing population of peregrines and Magpies. And our population of small birds is noticeably decreasing in the last 5 years. We used to see so many finches and sparrows. Even the tree rats, (pigeons) are in decline due to the Magpies and their egg eating appetites.
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CWP, do the boxes encourage the small birds to nest?
We have a growing population of peregrines and Magpies. And our population of small birds is noticeably decreasing in the last 5 years. We used to see so many finches and sparrows. Even the tree rats, (pigeons) are in decline due to the Magpies and their egg eating appetites.
They certainly do Jimbob, we had 23 sets of sparrows nest last year. We dont get too many tits (steady) or small birds here as im right on the clifftop and i dont think they enjoy the wind or the lack of trees, but sparrows are in abundance, as well as the annoying seagulls. I drill my entrance holes at 30mm, so a bit big for the smaller tits who prefer 25mm but a happy size for what we have here.
See a few kestrals hovering over the cliffs, they tend to take the rabbits which we also see a lot of.
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i shall have a look at those later, i have a couple of camera boxes in my garden also, they are brilliant. Great watching the way the blue tits get rid of the 'waste' they create in little parcels, clever creatures they are.
One of my time fillers during shielding lockdown has been making normal birdboxes, i have 37 up in the garden at the moment which have attracted flocks of sparrows, but have given twice that number away.
I need Boris to let me out soon!
Wow, 37 boxes! Anyway, yes nestcams are great! Who needs Netflix!
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Wow, 37 boxes! Anyway, yes nestcams are great! Who needs Netflix!
I read that as Nestflix ;D
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I read that as Nestflix ;D
O0
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Thinking of trying one of these - we are urban but back onto a large area of gardens/marl pits/semi woodland and get a lot of night visitors - would love to see what goes on. Does anyone have any recommendations of models?
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I have seen a badger once in our communal garden in the middle of the city (but bordering a big park). I'm curious if they are still around. Also like to know if there are still hedgehogs. Foxes are common of course. I also get Tawny Owls in our garden. It would be really cool to capture one with a night cam if it catches a mouse in the grass. I need a trailcam (http://walkingforum.co.uk/Smileys/alive/cheesy.gif)
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The camera I was given is a USogood TC30 Trail Camera. I can't compare it to anything else but have found it very easy to use. Option of pictures only, video only or pictures and videos. Am able to take 3 photo's then a video recording, with variable lengths of recording. Lots of other features like shot lag, the time the camera rests before taking more photos or videos. You can also set it up to take a picture at the same time every day so you can take pictures of flowers/plants growing. It also has an easy to use interface with sturdy buttons.
However I have an issue with the clock on mine, so am sending back. Don't know if this is a common fault or unlucky but apart from that I love it but there are plenty of others available with various different qualities. I passed quite a bit of lockdown reading about them.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wildlife-Activated-Waterproof-Scouting-Surveillance/dp/B081Q7HS64
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Cheers MarkT - I will have a good look - some interesting things there - I like the sound of the daily picture it would be quite fascinating.