February 10th, 2015

A couple of people have asked me why I haven’t posted any trail cam videos lately. For a couple of weeks I had the camera focused on the mink den (see previous posts). What I have learned about mink is that they don’t dilly-dally. The trail camera has a 1-3 second delay between the time that it senses movement, and when it starts recording. So I have several dozen videos of nothing, and several more of the tail of a mink disappearing out of view. Also, I have no video editing software, so I have many 30-second videos that only show a mink tail in the first second, and 29 seconds of bushes blowing in the wind. So I haven’t been posting those.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I saw some coyote tracks going down the middle of the stream. Coyote tracks look like dog tracks, but they follow a narrower path. Also, coyotes do not stop to investigate every tree in the forest like dogs do. Then, the next day, a class from the Catholic School Board actually saw a coyote crossing in front of them as they were cross-country skiing. Since that day, I have had the camera in the middle of Laurel Creek (the stream) where I saw the tracks. Last night I got the first video of a coyote. It is a quick view, and pretty dark, but it’s a coyote.

This week, we had a small deer carcass in the woods (maybe killed by that coyote…) So today I took the spine from the carcass and dropped it in front of the camera. Maybe a coyote will find it and stop to take a sniff.

[wpvideo RDGCa8pT]