SMOKER'S TRAIL NAMADGI WILDLIFE

Back from Namadgi where I left a camera pointing up a worn animal trail near Smoker's Flat for a week. Nothing particularily different from any of the other trails 'off the beaten tracks' so probably a good time-frame to gauge wildlife activity in the area. A freind had set two other cameras nearby and the plan was to catch wildlife in two opposing broadsides with my camera looking up the track.

Unfortunately there was a problem with the other two cameras with both failing within days and nothing much came from them. All up the lil Acorn captured 50 images and 25 ten second videos. The worthwhile ones are below...

The photos captured as a timeline I think paints a picture... a seven day snapshot of a nondescript track in Namadgi. All the images below are time and date stamped and will enlarge to actual size if clicked. A bit novel in the unit is the inclusion of a temperature at the time of each photograph.

So... out of the 50 images it started with a Currawong on Tuesday...

On Wednesday a black and beige/brown spotted feral pig wandered through. This comes as no surprise to me as I had seen a few nearby a few months ago. This particular porker was walking quite quickly as the camera takes 1 second after triggering to snap 2 pictures in succession...

By the second photo he had passed under the fallen tree branch. The video activated after the second photo and just captured the animal's exit in the first few seconds...

Thursday... Captured, more so in the video, are some largish eastern greys travelling through away from he camera...

One stops for a look around...

Friday saw another series of a very photogenic currawong. I won't bore you with all of them...

Saturday at 9:13 am some more passing Kangaroos also heading up the trail away from the camera...

Now, the last photo of interest... It seems I have another entry to the cryptic Namadgi photo Collection. (First entry on the left). The best suggestion from that one was a blond billy goats beard.

To explain how I have the camera set up it detects... waits 1 second... captures 2 images in succession followed by 10 seconds of video. The camera then resets 1 minute after last activation.

The animal in the following photo came through, same day, at 3 PM on the 14th (Saturday). I'm presuming, and I could be wrong that it is travelling forward up the track away from the camera... This however does not explain why there wasn't a second photo and a following video. There is not...

I've enlarged the photo. The only other conclusion I could draw is it is coming down the track towards the camera. Again to do this it should have triggered the camera well before the camera, such as the pig photos. Again it did not and I can't detect the tail of an exiting animal...

Of course, as I suspect it is in the case of the blond haired animal, it could have entered the feild of view of the camera, turned, and went out of view. Fox? Echidna? Regardless I can't put my finger on what it is and what it was doing?

So... I learned a lot about positioning the camera and the angle this time is an interesting perspective I think. In hindsight I should have pointed the camera the opposite direction. I seem also to get better results when I place the camera 'watching' a trail from the sidelines than placing it head on as in this series.

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