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1st attempt using a trail cam. Any advice appreciated :) (1 Viewer)

Cornish mouse

Well-known member
United Kingdom
I got myself a fairly cheap trail cam to have a play with catching photos / footage of wildlife using my back garden bird feeders. I set it up just before dark last night and brought it in same time today to see how it worked. It wasn't very successful the lighting put a lot of the captures in silhouette and it didn't capture any of the smaller bird I know visited. I will try setting up at the opposite end of the wall to see if this solves the light issue and try putting the motion sensitivity up although i worry branches moving in the breeze will set it off constantly. Is there any advice this community can share about getting better results with trail cams or maybe I'm just going about this the wrong way?

It managed to catch lots of squirrel and wood pigeon pics/footage, a herring gull, a great tit, a blackbird and what i think is either a robin or a flycatcher in flight.
 

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    blackbird.png
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  • Herring gull and great tit.png
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  • robin maybe.png
    robin maybe.png
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  • Squirrel.JPG
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  • Wood pigeon.JPG
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Don’t point southwards or you can get sun dazzled during the day. Avoid being too close to moving grass or other vegetation that will trigger it. Expect to get lots of videos of the same species walking about, eg rabbits, squirrels. Sometimes setting it to camera mode rather than short video mode makes it easier to step through lots of data… the more data you get the more chance of some really rare stuff. Maybe put one along an animal track to see what’s using it. I have put camera on holes in the ground to find that they were never used :-( Try out different places to see what works best.
Good luck, the rare amazing footage makes all the boring stuff worth wading through.
 

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