The scent of fresh duff and dew drops cling to the inside of my nostrils as my partner and I reach our destination in the heart of the woods. We make our way out of dense, tangled vine maple and over moss-covered logs to a boxy camera strapped tightly to a small tree. It looks like it waits for invisible movements and shadows of ghosts. We swiftly replace the memory card in the camera and check it for damage, then repeat our journey over the logs and through the understory back to our truck.
We return to headquarters with a handful of memory cards that hold thousands of images, revealing that the forest hosts more than shadows and ghosts. Our images are graced with numerous visitors, from the smallest of shrews to the largest of bears.
Many people enjoy “camera trapping” in the woods, including hunters looking for game and curious families spying on four-legged visitors to their backyards. It is a simple process of hiking to a chosen spot, strapping your camera around a tree, and turning on the camera before you hike back. Each camera has a motion and heat sensor which triggers the camera to take a picture or video of what was moving, while you are cozy at home. After a few days, you return to see what your camera has “trapped” in its lens.
For researchers and wildlife managers, the pictures from a carefully placed camera can lead to invaluable insight. Camera traps have revealed unseen behaviors in rare animals, better ways to count how many individuals are in a group, and have even caught new species on camera. They have been used to search for everything from deer to pumas, snow leopards, eagles, and even turkeys.
For our research project in the HJ Andrews Forest, cameras are one of our most critical tools. Right now, not much is known about the predators that prowl this forest, especially spotted skunks. Where do skunks go? What do they eat? Do they interact with other predators like bears and bobcats, and how? These are some basic questions that need to be answered to truly know all the critters of the forest and how they support it.
Our cameras will help begin to answer some of those questions. Right now, we have cameras placed at two types of locations. The first type are stations where we know about things like the weather, temperature and light, but not about the animals that visit them. These stations are spread out across the forest, and provide the perfect spot for us to place our cameras. This will reveal the secret spots which skunks and other carnivores visit. It will also tell us where they don’t like to visit, which could make our questions even more interesting about why they avoid these places, or if they can even live there.
The second type of location are spots where other scientists have been studying small animals like mice, chipmunks, and flying squirrels. Here we draw a big grid across a map, and we navigate through the trees to each of those planned points and place a camera there. When the day is over we have placed 80 cameras out over a square area 840 feet long, about the length of 28 school buses. We can use these pictures to help answer questions about important animals that skunks and other predators eat, and we will be able to cover a lot of ground without actually trapping the prey animals.
Below are a few pictures from some of the cameras in the woods this fall. See what you can find in them! Some pictures may look empty at first glance, but like most anything in the great outdoors, there’s more than meets the eye.
