If you’re interested in photography, you can find many of our archived posts here. This is the perfect time of year to review Sarah’s tips for better fall photos. And if you’re curious, you can read about both Sarah’s camera equipment and Katie’s.

It’s no surprise that we’re into photography. We love the art of taking photos and we appreciate it as a form of documentation. We use photos (and this blog) as a instrument for recording everything from favorite meals and drinks to vacations and the mundane.

Today I’m excited to share with you a new piece of equipment that’s helping me to document (and spy on) the wildlife in our backyard.

These photos are all coming from this Bushnell Wildlife Camera. I received it as a gift last Christmas, and I’m writing this post after a solid 8+ months of successful use.

The camera has a variety of settings. It records the date and time that each photo was taken, but we never adjusted the clock for daylight savings, so these summer times are all off by an hour. It can take still photographs as well as videos. You can program how many photos that the camera will take when the motion sensor is tripped. You can also program how far apart the photos are taken. In video mode, you have control over the length of the video recorded. So far, I haven’t taken any videos, but with so much photo success, I think I’m going to turn my attention to videos.

As you can see, I have the camera pointed at our little pond.

Side-note : I’m realizing now that the pond needs a more detailed update on the blog. We’ve gotten to a great equilibrium with this feature of our garden. It contains 4 goldfish that have been year-round pond residents for the past 2.5 years. The waterlilies and corkscrew rush are two perennials that have flourished over the past few years.

Living in such a dry environment, the pond attracts a variety of wildlife, particularly in late summer when other natural water sources have dried up. To some, this would create a nuisance in their yard. And honestly, we can’t argue, we know that attracting this much wildlife to our house is risky, but at the same time, we’re a bit giddy to see which creatures come to visit.

In this post I’m sharing a few photos that we pulled from the camera over the past month. The photos all contain time and date stamps.

Some creature, like the fox above seem to develop a regular routine. For example, we may see them daily around the same time for a few weeks. But then, for whatever reason, they’ll change their schedule and we may not see them for a few days or weeks.

Since it’s in such a public place, we also get plenty of bum shots.

Our most exciting photos to date have been of the mountain lion. It was a mountain lion’s footprints in the snow last winter that first made me want a wildlife camera. And so, while I’ve been excited about every creature we caught in the camera, this was really my big prize.

But, of course, when these photos came up on the computer. I was equal parts excited and terrified. I mean…

And then the mood immediately lightens when I see that a silly turkey visited the pond earlier the same day. Can you see him in the photo below?

We also got a photo of what I think is an Abert’s squirrel.

And there’s more than one photo of the goldfish.

Other than the mountain lion, the bathing bear is a favorite photo in our house. We have photos of the bear in the pond on one night and more of him leaving the pond on another night (based upon size and behavior, we’re assuming that it’s the same bear).

If you compare the time stamps on the two photos above, you’ll see that the deer visited the pond only 30 minutes after the bear left!

It’s little details like that that make having this camera so much fun… and slightly scary considering that all of this activity happens only steps from our deck while we sit blissfully unaware inside.