Spying On Wildlife

[Sanford]: Hi Sanford Smith here with Penn State Extension. Today the topic is trail cameras and how to use them to document the wildlife in an area on your own property or a property that you're interested in. And today I'm joined by Alex Suleski, and we're going to talk about his work at Shaver's Creek Environmental Center at Penn State. Alex, thanks for joining me. [Alex]: Thanks for having me. [Sanford]: I'd like to know more about the work you do with trail cams here. [Alex]: Sure. Yeah. So I have currently six trail cameras that I put out at any given time. And the purpose of them is helping us understand what our wildlife is doing when it's being wildlife. We don't tend to see a lot of things when we're out hiking the trails. A lot of animals like to stay away from us. So the trail cameras give us an opportunity to see these animals when they are where they live, doing what they do. [Sanford]: Trail cameras have been called trail cams or camera traps, things like that in the past. Are they all the same thing? [Alex]: Generally there's a lot of variation. Generally, they're motion activated, and whenever an animal comes by, it will trip that camera to turn on, whether it's daytime or nighttime. Many of them have nighttime options. And so they're extremely versatile when, we're trying to figure out where things are living, what they're doing, or even who's living in the area that I live in. [Sanford]: Yeah. They're also doing videos right there. They're activating video cameras these days. There's a lot of new technology, isn't there? [Alex]: There is. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the beautiful thing about it is you don't have to break the bank to start using trail cameras. The ones that I use are around $150 or so, and they're relatively basic. They take video, they take pictures. They do great jobs at filming things at night because they have infrared lights that the animals can't see, but the cameras can. So they're able to pick up on, nighttime activity very well. But more modern cameras can also be connected to cell phone service, so they can send you videos and pictures of what you're seeing wherever you are in the world. [Sanford]: Trail cams are used by hunters to kind of track wildlife a little bit and gauge where they are, and we're not talking about that today. We're talking about learning about wildlife with trail cameras throughout the year, throughout the seasons. And, Alex, one of the projects you've done is called A Season at Shaver's Creek. And it's great you have so many videos on there of so many different types of wildlife. I love to watch it and it's always based on the seasons. Spring. Winter, Summer. Fall. Tell me about a time that you captured something really fascinating or interesting with your trail camera. [Alex]: Yeah, I was walking a trail and noticed evidence of beaver activity starting to gnaw at a tree in a pond, and so I stuck a trail camera right in the mud at the edge, looking right at that tree, and was able to capture the entire process of this beaver bringing down this little tree right in the middle of the pond. And then the rest of the Beaver family came in after, and they all started stripping bark and sharing in the experience. [Sanford]: Anything else besides wildlife? I suppose you see a lot of weather events too out there. [Alex]: Absolutely, yeah. One of my favorite trail camera sites was created through a very powerful windstorm that came through and knocked down a lot of trees, and I was lucky enough to have had a camera setup looking up Shaver's Creek, and had it just focused with one of those trees right at the edge, and you can watch the wind blowing up the creek. Hit that tree. It twists the tree. The tree cracks and breaks and falls. It's very dramatic. But then from that there was a bit of a stump left from that tree, and I was able to stick a trail camera on that stump, looking across the tree to see what crossed it. And we've gotten so many videos of such a variety of wildlife using that new resource that was created through this windstorm. [Sanford]: What advice would you have to someone who wants to study the wildlife on their property through the seasons, or maybe even just in one season, or someone who knows someone else who has property, who's allowing them to come on that property and let me just recommend here, though, that you must not go on private property with trail cams. That's illegal. That's trespassing. But if you have permission, preferably written permission, you can go and set up cameras and help the landowner learn about the wildlife that are there as well as yourself. Alex, what, what are some of the things that people should know before they jump right into this? [Alex]: So it's a pastime that can be kind of exactly what you want it to be. You don't have to go all in like I did. It's great to just have one camera out on your property. You might even live in a town, but might be surprised by what you see in your own backyard coming through when you're not there. Finding those passage points that wildlife passes through is the best easy way to start figuring out what's around. If you're looking for the right trail camera for you, there's a lot of online resources that do a lot of comparisons between trail cameras that can help you figure out the right fit for the right budget. [Sanford]: Well, thank you very much, Alex, for joining me today. I hope that was interesting to you as a viewer watching this video. There's so much you can learn from trail cameras, and they're not that complicated. It's easy to get into. Thank you Alex. [Alex]: Thanks for having me.