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| Caught in the trap: A raccoon was 'trapped' by a camera set up in the California coastal wilderness by Chris Wemmer and Reno
Taini. Courtesy of Reno Taini and Chris Wemmer |
Hunting wild animals – with cameras
Paparazzi naturalists catch nature in the act with strategically placed motion-sensitive cameras.
from the April 10, 2008 edition
Page 3 of 3
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"Hey, look at that road kill!" says Wemmer. He guides his sedan to an abrupt stop on the road's shoulder as he and Taini are returning, now in March, to see what the cameras have captured.
Wemmer glances at the deer sprawled in gentle repose. "That's been eaten out of the hind end," he says. "Let's go have a look."
What follows is a lesson in scavenger gastronomy. "The eyes have been eaten by owls," says Wemmer. "The entrails were eaten by vultures, and the haunches were eaten out of by coyotes or a bobcat," he says.
Twenty minutes later at the stream crossing, Wemmer and Taini open up camera No. 1. Its 96 photos, each with a time and date stamp, tell the story of who visited and when.
Shortly after 9 one evening, raccoons pick their way up the stream. As one animal walks centerstage, the eyes of another already shine in the darkness behind it. Several minutes later, at 9:20, the two turn back down the stream. A bobcat visits the stream both day and night, sometimes following the stream, other times coming and going from the side. Deer mice and wood rats come and go from the side of the stream.
The photos lend themselves to anthropomorphic interpretation. Here at the stream, two columns of traffic converge at a four-way zoological stop: Raccoons and bobcats travel east-west along the stream; mice, wood rats, and deer dart in from the sides. For rare simultaneous arrivals, right of way is determined not by rules, but by size, surprise, and superiority on the food chain.
"The bobcat was probably hunting," says Wemmer. "That area seemed to be right on its beat."
The photos also tell more subtle stories, which only a sitting Buddha might see if he watched this one spot of ground for a month. Pea plants inch upward through a series of 10 frames following a rain. The leaves of a six-inch nettle perk up between 6:58 p.m. and 5:18 a.m. – then droop as though heaving a sigh. Rabbits, wood rats, and bobcats appear and vaporize from one frame to the next, as though teleporting in and out of this living, growing diorama.
It's not bad for a first try – even on a piece of land that Taini has known for much of his life. "I've been here for so many years," he says, "and I continue to find out the wonders of this place."
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