Diario de mikef451

Hello Friends!
So this past week was a really good week! After finding the popular latrine log on the North San Gabriel River two weeks back, and placing my camera on it last week, we got two videos of it being used and one of those observations is backed up by one of the other cameras. Both observations have been confirmed and they represent the first live images of Swamp Rabbit that we have documented since we started our Nature Tracking project with Texas parks and Wildlife.
I collected some more fresh scat and my family continues to grumble about the growing quantity of vials in the freezer! Dr. Russell Pfau of Tarleton State University has a plan in place for some early December DNA analysis. We are hopeful of his success!

We managed to get a an American Woodcock on trail camera this week too!
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35819286

We have been seeing a lot of cottontail rabbits in our nighttime images and those are just too impossible to determine species I think. Looking back at the three documented Swamp Rabbits I observed in 2018 and early 2019, the benefiting factors for identification were color images, or the fact that the animal was in the water at night and happy about it apparently.
I have been becoming more inclined to use another type of camera to achieve a night time color image. The flash necessary for this is one that would be visible to animals and because of this I would not leave set up for very much time. Hopefully it will be not much different than lightning experienced by animals and certainly the flash duration, at fractions of a second, are not capable of causing harm to eyes. Perhaps next month we may have something in the works regarding this.
Short of trapping animals and releasing, something I know nothing about, I can think of no other method worth trying for short term use and quick answers.
Until next time,
Cheers everybody! And Happy Thanksgiving.