Animals that are surprisingly rare

I agree with @kiwifergus that night time helps! Some of my better mammal observations have come from trail cameras that do late night “observing” on my behalf along wildlife paths, pond edges, or near road kill. Speaking of which, probably my next best source of up close animal photos is stopping to observe road kill (including a gorgeous Cedar Waxwing, something I’ve never seen live and in person!)

Back to trail cameras, I have enjoyed the pictures even from a $20 trail camera from my local outdoor store. If you don’t have any forest edge of your own, I’ve had good luck asking if I could place the camera on someone else’s tree/post/etc. for wildlife observation. I’ve had willing encounters with park maintenance staff of a local park, a store manager of a walgreens with a more naturalized drainage pond, and a staff member of a church that has a nature trail. The only thing they requested was that I angle it so it doesn’t photograph people/cars using the area and as payment the Walgreens store manager wanted a copy of the pictures out of curiosity!

To answer the question, I was overjoyed to catch a coyote among the more non-threatened but “rare” sightings. It’s still the only sighting posted to iNaturalist in the county and one of the few in the state of Delaware.

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