The second installment in a two-part post of July/August wildlife videos.
Over the past two years, most of my wildlife videos have been captured by cameras placed on a hill near my home. In this post – my final post of wildlife-camera video until next year – I have some pretty neat stuff to share. Lots of bobcats and black bears! Read on to watch both videos.
Animal babies!
The month of June brings the onset of summer – and the emergence of wildlife babies. In this month’s episode of clips from my wildlife cameras, you’ll see young’uns from two or three species, and some really interesting behavior from a raccoon, deer, porcupine, barred owl, and black bear. Sit back, relax, and enjoy!
Bears, bobcats, groundhogs, and more.
The month of May was surprisingly quiet, as if the animals of Lyme were on the move – not settled in any given location, not often reappearing in the video captures from my wildlife cameras posted in two forests and my own backyard. Some locations that had previously provided multiple daily videos of a busy porcupine couple, for example, became dormant, causing me to explore new locations that may be more lively. One of those turned out to be exceptionally lively, attacked by a bear within days of its deployment! Read on…
Continue reading “Lyme wildlife – May 2025”A vernal pool is a busy crossroads.
In the Lyme forest, my usual tromping grounds include a couple of vernal pools. These small, shallow depressions fill with water in the spring – initially, from melting snow that cannot yet seep into the still-frozen earth below, and later from early spring rains. They teem with life, and are a particularly important breeding ground for amphibians. They also attract wildlife of all types, to hunt or to drink. I saved aside the clips from my two cameras beside one vernal pool – not included in my April videos shared two weeks ago – because the activity around this pool is so fascinating. It also provides my first ever view of predation in action, in almost two years of work with wildlife cameras.
Winter becomes spring, and the animals are busy.
It was like a switch had flipped. February here in New Hampshire was snowy and consistently cold – the temperature never rose above freezing, which led to a fantastic season for outdoor winter activities. But on the first of March the weather immediately started to warm. The lower elevations of Lyme, where I deploy my wildlife cameras, lost all their snow — only to see the snow return twice in brief snowstorms. My wanders through the forests of Lyme led me to discover exciting new locations to capture video of wildlife activity… and to meet some of these critters face to face! Read on.
Favorite photos and videos.
Wow, 2024 was quite the year. With a dozen or more hikes in New Hampshire, and travels to Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, California, South Carolina, and India, I had many opportunities for photography. Check out some of my favorite photos!
This year I dug deeper into wildlife photography by expanding my network of camera traps (wildlife cameras) in a forest near home. Click on the image below for a compendium of my favorite clips! It is 14 minutes long – I know, in the era of TikTok that may seem interminable, but I encourage you to sit back and enjoy the wildlife at its own pace. You’ll see black bear, beaver, bobcat, coyote, deer, fisher, red fox, goose, groundhog, owl, raccoon, skunk, flying squirrel, and turkey.
For all my wildlife-camera videos, visit this tag.
P.S. PetaPixel posted its own “best trail camera photos of 2024”. Exotic!
Still cameras: this year I upgraded from the Canon R5 to the Canon R5 Mark II; I use several lenses for most photos: 24-105mm, 100-500mm, and (recently) 200-800mm. Some of my favorites also come from my iPhone 14 Pro.
Wildlife cameras: I started off with a pair of cameras from Punvoe, which produced most of the video on this site; more recently I’ve bought some Rigdoo; they are very similar (the internal firmware is clearly almost identical) but with a better camera (4K) and (supposedly) a faster reaction time and less-obtrusive night-vision light.
Bobcats, beavers, coyotes, and more!
The month of December brought snow… then melt… then snow… then melt. The wildlife in my little area of Lyme’s forest were busy… the deer were seeking food among the remnants of summer’s bounty, the squirrels were looking for long-lost acorns, the beavers were rebuilding one section of their dam only to find other sections breached in late-December rains. The foxes, coyotes, and bobcats were on the prowl, hoping to capture one of the above. Check out this month’s video for more! Sit back and relax for just six minutes.
So much to share this month!
November was a busy month in the forests of Lyme, New Hampshire… especially evident because I doubled the number of cameras in late October. Last week, I shared fun video of beavers captured next to one of their dams along a brook near home. Well, beavers weren’t the only visitors to this brook! Today I share two short videos: one showcasing the variety of other critters that follow the beaver’s trail, and the other highlighting animals that cross the brook further downstream.
In this first video, taken alongside a game trail the busy beavers created while dragging trees down to the stream, you’ll see a puzzled buck, a curious raccoon, a busy mouse, and… a special guest. Don’t miss the special guest! and read on for a second video.
Spoiler alert: Not all the cameras survived!
September was a busy month in the forests of Lyme New Hampshire, as the foliage started to turn and forest residents began their preparations for winter. This month I’m organizing the videos by location – with each video mostly in chronological order. It’s interesting to see the variety of animals that pass by a given point – sometimes within minutes of each other. I captured first-looks at two species I’ve never seen on camera before: a solo flying squirrel, and a group of strolling crows, both foraging among the leaf litter. Unfortunately, one of my cameras did not survive the month! Read on.
Continue reading “Wildlife cameras – September”August treats us to bears, coyotes, a bathing owl, and more!
I woke at 2am to the howls of the coyotes, and they sounded close. It’s increasingly common for us to hear coyotes near our home, but in 33 years living in New Hampshire I’ve only once seen a coyote in-person. (They are mostly noctural, and I am not!) As noted in my post from June, I was thrilled when my wildlife camera caught a daylight video with a litter of coyote pups visiting a vernal pool. So, as I lay awake listening to the coyotes last night, I imagined those little pups were out there now, learning the ways of their pack, and wondered whether they might be in view of of one of my cameras.
Indeed my cameras brought us many exciting treats in August: a pack of coyotes, many views of both mama and papa bear (and baby bears too!), a fastidious barred owl, a nosy skunk, and more.
David Kotz 