Hi! I’m Hanna’23 and I am a senior Biology major from Orange County, California. This summer I have been working on the burrowing owl project, in which we are monitoring the status of burrowing owls at a site in Southern California.
Here I am checking on a motion sensing camera
Although we are monitoring for the presence of burrowing owls, we are also curious about what other animals are there. In the process of looking through THOUSANDS of camera trap photos (which are taken by motion sensing cameras), I have found lots of other animals. For every burrowing owl photo we have, we have a hundred photos of California ground squirrels, lizards sunbathing on top of the burrows, Northern mockingbirds stopping by to chill, and the occasional roadrunner coming by to show off its reflective feathers and its striking orange stripe on the side of its head. Here are some of our “greatest hits” from this summer:
A curious coyote and a butterfly
A road runner runs by!
A burrowing owl!