Roads End Naturalist

Exploring the natural world as we wander at the end of the road


Tag: trail camera

  • What the Cameras See

    Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way. ~John Muir While we were away (more on that in a future post), the trail cameras caught some interesting events in our woods. They also caught several deer inside our deer fence Read more…

  • Woods Neighbors

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    My favorite thing is just walking in the woods. I can do it for days on end without tiring of it. ~Jim Harrison This may be why I can’t get to all the posts I need to write about prior adventures…interesting things keep happening here in our woods. We were gone for several days and Read more…

  • Trying to Understand Our Wild Neighbors

    We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts. ~William Hazlitt And in some cases, we see nature with our trail cameras… This season seems to have fewer large buck deer than I have seen the past few years, but recently, a beautiful 8-pointer kindly walked in front of Read more…

  • Opossum “Tales”

    Making your bed is a simple way to start your day off on the right foot. ~Martha Stewart Ever since my friend Jerry posted some videos about the ‘possums in his back woods, I have been fascinated by the goings-on of our local marsupials. Because of Jerry’s fascinating footage of his critters, I bought a Read more…

  • The Youth of Summer

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    And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Things have been relatively quiet on the trail cameras the past month. No Read more…

  • Springtime in the Woods

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    The world’s favorite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May. ~Edwin Way Teale The trail cameras have been sort of slow lately, mainly capturing the usual suspects of deer, squirrels, and raccoons. They have also seen a few birds including an Ovenbird and a Wood Thrush gathering nesting material. There have been two Read more…

  • Squirrely Behavior

    …for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators… ~Henry David Thoreau Yesterday I posted about deer communication through scent at a community scrape. Are the other animals in our woods communicating to one another with scent? Do they have their own “social media sites”? I Read more…

  • Woodland Social Media

    Every act of communication is a miracle of translation. ~Ken Liu I recognize a buck scrape in our woods when I see one. It is a bare patch of earth with lots of hoof scrapes and deer tracks under an overhanging low limb (usually an evergreen). One or more twigs are often broken from the Read more…

  • More Bang for the Buck(s)

    The life of the wood, meadow, and lake go on without us. Flowers bloom, set seed and die back; squirrels hide nuts in the fall and scold all year long; bobcats track the snowy lake in winter; deer browse the willow shoots in spring. Humans are but intruders who have presumed the right to be Read more…

  • Deer Play

    White-tailed deer were observed throughout 1,711 hours on the Welder Wildlife Refuge, Texas. Only 11 events considered to be forms of play were witnessed, seven by fawns and four by adults. It is concluded that white-tailed deer are not typically playful animals. ~Edwin D. Michael, 1968 publication I did some research online after looking at Read more…