Frustration

Anyone who has used camera traps for any length of time has been frustrated – usually more than once. Sometimes the batteries in the camera have died, or perhaps it was forgetting to turn the camera on, or maybe the electronics in the camera had a problem.

But occasionally the quarry is the source of the frustration. For a couple of months I’ve had a camera trap on the edge of a stream where a wildlife trail crosses the stream. It’s yielded a few interesting photos like this heavily cropped image of a male hooded merganser –

On the most recent series of pictures was one of the black bear that apparently investigated the camera, slightly smearing the lens and tilting the camera in the process –

Had the camera not been tilted, the pictures taken on subsequent days may have been better or more readily cropped to yield a better image. As it was, the camera did get photos of wood ducks –

White-tailed deer –

And Canada geese –

It may have even caught this deer in mid-stream as it crossed –

And then along came the raccoon that only presented its ear for a clear photograph – but did manage to finish what the bear started and smeared mud all over the camera trap’s lens glass.

Some days later the camera photographed something swimming across the stream but the muddy lens yielded only the eye-shine and an extremely blurry image of whatever unidentifiable creature had created a wake. Frustration occasionally rules the day.