A Turkey Trot

I recently bought a Bushnell Trophy Cam Night Vision Trail Camera. The camera is motion-triggered and takes color photos in daylight and infrared photos at night. It has an infrared flash unit.

I set it up near one of our rainwater collector water dishes, which I've posted about before. I'm curious to see what wildlife is coming to the water dish. I swapped out the camera's flash card after a week and brought the card back to my computer to see what it had recorded. It had shot about 82 photos and here's some of the best.

First, is a great shot of a Rio Grande Wild Turkey. We usually only hear them and spotting one is a rare treat. Interestingly, it's not drinking water, but just walking by the dish which is located along a dirt road. The timestamp shows the photo was taken about 2 pm.

Next, is a night time, infrared shot, of three feral pigs. This photo was taken about 9 pm. It shows two pigs at the water dish and a third one on the left. There were about 6 photos of feral pigs, but this is the best one.

Finally, here is a night time photo of a cottontail rabbit. It was taken about 6:30 am. There were many photos of rabbits, both cotton tails and jack rabbits.

Silly Rabbit

I took this photograph of a small cottontail rabbit earlier this year. It's actually an Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus), one of the most common rabbit species in North America.

We have ideal habitat for them and we see them frequently. They like open, grassy areas with shrubs along the edges for cover. This one was near our house, inside the fence and that is normally deadly territory for them, but our dogs were inside at the time.

They have a two-stage defensive strategy. First, they will freeze, which is what this one has done. Then if you approach closer, they will run away in a zig-zag pattern. They are quite fast and you never get really close.

They are mostly vegetarian although they sometimes eat insects. In turn, they are predated by coyotes, racoons, hawks, and owls.

There is another species of rabbit which we see on our property too, the black-tailed jackrabbit. They are larger, have longer ears with a black trim and have a long rear legs.