Husband commented that he’d not heard all that many coyotes this year, and I have to admit that neither have I. Usually we hear them several nights a week by summer time. Certainly we’ve had a bunny population explosion this year. Not sure if someone did a big hunt, or if the pack has just moved around for some reason.
Although I’ve been seeing one on the trail cameras occasionally, I’m pretty sure it’s only one, and it appears to be a youngster. I caught a daylight look at him not to long ago, apparently hunting bunnies in my neighbor’s back yard. Pretty sure he’s (or she, can’t tell from a distance) not mature, got a skinny gangly look to him, like you see in not yet mature dogs. Course, I didn’t have my camera on me at the time, dammit.
I’m thinking this is the cantaloupe thief, as I got a very blurry shot of a coyote checking out the garden the night after someone stole the cantaloupe, and, other than the bunnies munching around the edges, nothing else has even approached the garden.
A note for everyone who says that “Well, I have a big dog, so X wildlife don’t come into my yard!”. I got news for you. Chances are good Apollo is quite a bit bigger than your dog, AND he’s an intact male. And he pees all around the yard, and around the garden in particular. We actually encourage him to pee around (around, not IN) the garden in hopes of driving off some of the munchers. Not only has it not appeared to make any difference in the quantity of wildlife we see, he and a couple foxes ended up in a “My Tree! Peeing Contest” last winter!
East central NY here, I too am seeing an explosion in the rabbit population. However, I am also seeing coyotes. Four or five at a time zipping past my trail cameras. What I am not seeing are foxes. Zip. Nada. I did just get a bear on one of my trail cams! First one in 11 years of camera trapping! So much wildlife out there, we are afraid to let the dogs out at night for their last pee of the day. Raccoons, opossums, porcupines, skunks, all on the cams right around the house! It’s worth your life to go out there!
I haven’t seen any bear! Which surprises me cause every couple years or so one will knock over bee hives in surrounding towns.
We had foxes all winter. I haven’t seen any since March or so, but that could be camera placement (I move them around quite a bit depending on whats going on). Often as many as 3 at a time!
No porcupines either. I’ve seen them dead on the side of the highway, but none in the yard or on cameras (thankfully!).
And yah, we generally don’t use the backyard after full dark, and the front only with all the security lighting turned on. I don’t REALLY want to take the dogs out for a last pee and run into a coyote! My garden is not that far from the back porch……..
The cam that caught the bear has been catching a bobcat always walking away from the camera, one time carrying something, presumably a meal, hopefully to babies! I then added a second cam looking at the first one, to catch the cat from the front. And so, got more pics of the bear!
I caught a porcupine once on a trail cam, right next to our house, but we have never seen one in person anywhere, except dead on the road! I got a fox earlier this year right near our house, but none on my cameras out “in the field”.
This is my first year to keep the cameras going year round, been a lot of fun. I now have TEN cameras, all working, all the time. It’s like Christmas switching out memory cards and coming home to see what I got!
Oh, that bear, turns out to be pretty small, I had a pic of me standing right next to where it walked, and when I showed them side by side, I could see that I possibly could have straddled it, if it were tame. So, now do I have to be worried about a momma bear? LOL! WAY too much wildlife going on out there!
Nice! Its fun to watch though!