Moose Selfie

 

 A curious moose photographed in April in northern N.H. While the moose is one of the largest animals in the woods, it's fate often is determined by one of the smallest, the winter tick. Yearling moose in particular face extreme pressure and mortality from winter ticks. Moose are not as effective at grooming as deer and often rub the hair off the chest and shoulder areas where they cannot reach. Excessive rubbing and grooming exposes white broken hair shafts which why many also call them "ghost moose". This particular moose was looking pretty good after a long winter.

N.H. Winter Coyote

        A winter coyote looking for food during the 2014 winter in Success N.H. Despite the bad press some people give them, in my mind the eastern coyote (coywolf) is one of the most amazing and respectable animals-and one of the hardest to photograph. When it comes to being successful and filling a void in the eastern U.S.-they certainly take the cake.
      This set of pictures is only a few of many, but the coyote has that look in his eye-a wild look I would expect to see if I curled up on the open ground in nothing but a sleeping bag but had that nagging sensation like I was being watched. Poking my head out I can imagine seeing this face staring back...one to me that is questioning the difference between a threat and a potential meal. Lucky for me, the camera I built was designed for a long deployment. Set on September 22nd 2013, it was still taking pictures on June 4th 2014 when I checked it.

Suprise in the muskrat hole

The last couple months I've been building wildlife camera systems like it's going out of style. This has left little time for filming but I finally managed to get a video set out last week. This is a combination of five clips from an HD system I built. The plan was to film muskrats coming out of the ice(based on tracks). As usual...there's always a surprise when dealing with wildlife and I'll have to adjust my video set accordingly. It's worth changing the settings to view in HD (1080p) and volume on high:

Black Bear Marking

I made the set in late fall and this video was taken just before the first snowfall. This back bear stopped by to leave his scent on this marking tree in norther N.H. Encounters between black bears and my remote cameras like this one have become all too familiar. Now that the bears are sleeping for the winter I'm enjoying a grace period of filming without my cameras being eaten or tipped over..but it's shots like this that makes me miss them.

Black bear climbing a pine from Peter Abdu on Vimeo.

Moose Surprise

Turn up the Volume for this video:

Moose Surprise from Peter Abdu on Vimeo.

A quick one minute clip of a bull moose checking out the set. Now that the bears are asleep I thought my cameras were safe...I Should've known better. Often the bull moose will do some serious damage during the rut but this young bull was relatively gentle with the camera set and thankfully left everything in working order. This set was not designed for filming moose, and hence the moose is mostly out of frame. I still enjoyed listening to him investigate the area.

Northern Bobcat

These are a few of my favorite shots from this summer in Northern N.H. A lot of activity at this set with plenty of black bears, porcupines, deer, and bobcat.  These pictures were taken at 10:11am and 8:21pm.

Young Beaver on the Dam

Beaver crossing from Peter Abdu on Vimeo.

Here's a quick video I shot last week while filming the north American Beaver (Castor canadensis). The more time I spend in the woods the more I've gravitated to beaver ponds. I've come to sincerely appreciate these ecosystem engineers and it's always easy to find a great set of tracks in the mud.

If you turn the volume up you will notice a chirp near the end of the clip (~14 seconds). Also note that at the end of the clip the beavers were trying to move the camera. I have 10 minutes worth of video in which multiple beavers try to work the camera free. Beavers certainly are determined and well adapted mammals, but ultimately it was the curiosity of a black bear cub that did this camera in.