Camera Trapping Workshop

Having heard all about the latest gadgets being used by penguin biologists, it was great to come on a YWT workshop today on camera trapping. It was organised by a small company called Nature Spy, who provide the equipment to monitor wildlife in gardens and reserves.

In the morning, we had an indoor session starting with a slide show of still and video images taken using camera traps. This showed the range of shots that can be achieved, some of the issues to overcome, and also some of the history. Camera traps were first used as far back as 1890, but this is another area where the technology has really improved in the last few years, with cameras now much more discreet and therefore less likely to be seen by people and damaged/stolen.  Quality has also improved massively - as well as taking still images, audio, HD video and time lapse images can also be recorded.

We had a comprehensive walk through of a couple of models that the company use, to understand how they are set up and work, and after lunch had chance to go out and play.

We walked to Staveley nature reseve, just five minutes walk from the village hall.  We then had chance to set up the cameras - in a rather false position on fence posts by a path - and walked past to make sure they had picked us up. This revealed a couple of quirks around setting the number of photos to capture per bout, and the interval time between the sequences, with some results better than others. It is one of those things that comes with experience, and you may need to trade off the number of shots taken vs battery life.

We then had a short walk around the reserve, looking for animal tracks and finding the best places to locate cameras. It is a very peaceful reserve, though there was a lot of Himalayan Balsam around, and in a worrying juxtraposition with quite scarce plants like the broad leaved helleborine. Perhaps I can help sort that out in my new role ...