How trail cameras opened my eyes to the animals all around us.
Ever since getting my first trail camera I was fascinated. Every day before school, I would rush out to my motion-activated camera and check to see what had passed by the night before. From its perch on a tree stump near my house, my camera captured videos of skunks, the local cats, rats, and raccoons. But it didn’t end there.
After testing at my house, I set up a camera on a family trip to Sonoma County in Northern California. After a little bushwacking and some wet shoes, I placed the camera in a bush overlooking a small creek, leaving it there until our next trip to the area a month later. It’s a beautiful, wild place. Deer walk in the front yard, eating the long grasses growing there. Foxes patrol in the evenings, and curious raccoons may or may not break and enter homes nightly to raid the pantries, trash cans, and leftovers. The point is … there are animals everywhere. And I wanted to see more of them.
The idea with these cameras is you leave them strapped to a tree, and they take a photo or video every time they sense motion. They keep collecting videos until they are retrieved. Some cameras can connect to your phone via Wi-Fi/cell service, but the type I had is collected manually. (I use the Rigdoo HT-20 purchasable on Amazon.)
So after a few weeks, the anticipation built on our drive back up the coast. We finally pulled into our driveway around 9 p.m. I grabbed a flashlight, ran down the trail to the camera, and brought it back to the house. I spent the next three hours pouring over the footage I’d gotten over those three weeks — about 200 photos and videos of skunks, foxes, raccoons, deer, rats, birds, coyotes, turkeys, and more.
I’m 14 now, and even after setting up cameras for around four years, it’s still a thrill to unstrap the camera from the tree and open it to review the footage. It is so exciting to look at the shots and to see the foxes, raccoons, skunks, deer, turkeys, and other animals playing around, chasing each other, running, and walking gracefully. My time monitoring the wildlife in the area has led me to realize just how close we are to animals, just how many live in our backyards. Or front yards. Or under our decks.
I’m now 14, and even after setting cameras for around four years, it’s still a thrill to unstrap the camera from the tree and open it to review the footage.
Ethan Maday
Even in the biggest cities, animals explore, roam, and live normally. I live near a small, thicket and drainage between two streets, tiny pockets of habitat in my backyard that animals call home. One time, eating dinner at a restaurant in downtown San Luis Obispo, a young opossum crawled right through the bushes near the edge of the restaurant. It only takes a little bit of space for an animal to live in for it to thrive. Just a small crack in the urban sprawl of our cities attracts life in ways many of us wouldn’t believe.
Motion-activated cameras have opened my eyes to the animals, which are truly all around us. And as much as we think that owning a bit of Earth means we are the most important ones, it is really not us who rules the land. It’s the animals. With or without a motion-activated camera, I encourage you to take a look outside to get to know your wild neighbors, and see them up close, living their lives as nature intended.
Want more? Read another Bluedot Institute story about how a student used photography to connect to her local environment.
