For my birthday last July, I got a wildlife trail camera. I wanted to see what critters were eating my pumpkins at night, and maybe try to get some cute bird pictures by putting it into a bird feeder or something. Even though I’ve had it awhile, I’ve only recently started playing with it.

The first visitor I caught on camera was maybe a little disappointing, but probably shouldn’t be surprising considering I live in an urban area (our tiny patio backs up to a shopping center, not wilderness after all). It’s a rat. I had thought maybe it would be an opossum, since we spotted one once out there, but no. I don’t know if this is what was eating my pumpkins last year, or my tomato recently, but it’s a suspect for sure.

I don’t think we will have a serious rat problem, because the next night, I tried out the video setting and it caught a different nocturnal visitor: (Note, WordPress won’t let me upload the video without paying them more money, so this is just a still from the video.)

I think it’s probably safe to say this is the most likely suspect regarding the destruction of my catnip plant last year. But I’ll always forgive the cute floof. (And I was able to save the plant, so there’s that.)

I was disappointed in the lack of bird visitors, or at least those the camera was catching. Then yesterday I got this photo:

Not a great view, but at least verifies what we already knew – that birds do visit the yard. Maybe a pigeon? Hard to figure out size from this view. The beak looks not quite right for a pigeon. So I think my next experiment will be to put some seed out on the table and try to attract some birdy visitors.

For anyone interested, this a Wosports Trail Camera. Not too expensive and so far, easy to use. The settings are to take 1 photo when motion is detected, take a burst of 3 photos, or take a video and you can set the length of time.