During Anna’s naturalist training, she learned of an awesome Fort Collins project: unmanned wildlife cameras. These cameras are mounted to trees. Whenever they sense motion and heat, they snap a photo. Unmanned cameras let us peek into what’s happening in the middle of the night, during a snowstorm, or after we round the bend out of view.
Below are a few of our favorite images from these cameras. Big exciting wildlife like bears, bobcats, fox, coyote, and mountain lions are out there, they just prefer to hide when loud humans come walking down the trail. Note the time stamp on each photo. It’s cool to see when these animals are out and doing their thing – whether it’s hunting or playing.
If you’ve ever wondered what wild animals do when no one’s watching, now you know. To see more, head over to the Fort Collins Natural Areas website, where over 1000 wildlife camera images are archived. And keep your eyes peeled on your next hike!
Wandering the Wild 
What surprises me is that a lot of them are out during the day! What great technology.
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Thanks for sharing! Makes us more aware of the wild!
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These are the best. That group of mountain lions: wow. Thanks for sharing these.
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I love these! I’m especially excited about the cats. Go cougars & bobcats! I do tend to root for the predators. I once worked with a wildlife biologist who was using remote cameras to try and census wolverines in the Mt. Hood area. They were very very elusive and the leading opinion was that there were no wolverines up there, but she got a few camera snaps and it was magic! It was like seeing a mythical being.
Thanks for sharing these, I’ll go check out that website to see more.
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These are absolutely beautiful. Thanks.
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What a wonderful treat to be able to see these animals as they really are! Very impressive!
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