Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Box Turtle and Squirrel

One of my favorite things about the trailcams is you never know what you're going to get. Below are pics of a Box Turtle triggering the camera and then 15 minutes later a Squirrel looking for acorns comes into view. The Turtle is right above the temperature readout. The Squirrel doesn't notice the Turtle until the second pic it's in. Then it gets curious as to what the Turtle is.





















12 comments:

Michelle said...

Kind of cute! Maybe it was a real meeting of the minds. ha

Joe said...

Farmchick - I thought getting the turtle on camera was neat. I'm not sure the squirrel thought much of the meeting...lol.

Inger said...

It's so much fun to stop by your blog to see what you have captured with your camera.

Anonymous said...

It's amazing how the turtle blends right in.
Kind of calms me down after seeing all the bears!
vickie

Unknown said...

Nice rack on that turtle! :)

Joe said...

Canyon Girl - Thanks. I always appreciate the comments.

Vickie - It took me a couple of second to see it when I was checking the pics. It does blend in well. The bears have disappeared :(. We usually run some out of the corn fields when we chop them but this year we don't see any. They've probably moved back up into the mountains.

Trey - I"m guessing it about a 170 class :).

Rogue Huntress said...

Thanks for becoming a follower of my blog. You have some pretty cool pictures on here, makes me think I should pick up a trail cam. The look on the squirrel's face in the last one is priceless.

Karen Thomason/Gordon Setter Crossing said...

Hey Joe, I've suspected that creatures in the woods do all kinds of funny things....they just don't do them in front of US! Wish we could hear the conversation between the turtle and the squirrel.(ha ha) Oh, and did the turtle run the battery down on your camera, taking so long to get through the scene?

Anonymous said...

Joe,
I have to admit that is the very first turtle game cam pic I've ever seen. Nice work and I'm thinkin' that your guessin' a little low on the score. I'm thinkin' about 185, lol!

Joe said...

Rogue Huntress – Thank you and you’re welcome. I’ve really enjoyed your blog. The trail cams are great and a lot of fun…but addictive :)!! The squirrel is funny. I’m thinking it doesn’t know quite what to make of the turtle.

Karen – That conversation would have been fun to ease drop on. Interestingly I only got two three shot series of just the turtle several minutes apart. I guessing the camera wasn’t picking up enough heat off of the shell to continually trigger the camera. I think it only triggered when the turtle was fairly close to the camera and it’s head or leg was exposed enough to get the heat and motion to trigger it. I’m pretty sure the squirrel triggered the last series because that was the last shots I got of the turtle.

Kari - Yeah, the turtle is something else. I'm not sure about the rack. I'm thinking he's needs another year...lol.

Katie (Nature ID) said...

I love seeing motion detection shots on blogs. I'm surprised the slow-moving turtle set it off. What's this about a "heat" trigger?

Joe said...

Hey Nature ID. Thanks for stopping by. Actually "heat" probably wasn't exactly the word to use. The trail cameras actually use a PIR(Passive Infrared)sensor along with a motion sensor to trigger the camera. The PIR sensor detects warm targets in motion over ambient background temperature. A stationary target, or a target not moving can not be detected. The target must also have a warmer surface temperature than the ambient background temperature in order to be detected. That's why I think the turtles head or leg had to be exposed and moving for it to trigger the camera. The shell was probably too close to the ambient temperature. I'm always welcome to other ideas if someone as them but that's my best guess or my SWAG...Scientific Wild Ass Guess :).