A couple of months ago I found tire tracks up at our new house, along with some new garbage in the driveway. And then I found an old dishwasher dumped on the driveway. We decided we needed to keep track of what goes on when I’m not working at the house, so we got a game camera. I mounted it about 10 feet up in a tree, aimed at the cable we keep across the driveway. I hoped I could capture an image of anyone who came to the house since they would have to stop to take the cable down.

Most of what I got is me coming and going.

I feel bad about driving my truck to the new house when it’s just about a two minute walk from our current house, but I can’t carry everything I need by hand. I checked the back seat Sunday when I left the new house. I had my circular saw, sawzall, jigsaw, grinder, cordless drill, cordless driver, stapler and a bunch of odds and ends (like tape measure, pencil, drill bits and so on). I also had two long extension cords and my eight-foot stepladder in the bed of the truck. So I pretty much have to drive.

We occasionally walk over with the dogs to take a look.

I’m wearing a cap because the angle of the camera view emphasizes my receding hairline.

Over the month or so that the camera has been up, we have seen the buyers of our old house visit the new house a couple of times. That’s OK, since we told them they were welcome to take a look. They are probably disappointed in the progress; I know I am.

We have also caught some unknown vehicles. Here’s a visitor from Alabama.

This worked just like I hoped it would. The driver stopped close to the cable so the camera got the license plate. This person apparently stopped, looked, and then backed down the driveway without getting out.

This one stopped short, so the camera didn’t get the tag.

I don’t recognize this person, or this truck. The camera timed its pictures so it didn’t catch the person’s face.

This one drove up after dark.

The camera has an IR flash that’s supposed to be invisible to the human eye. The tag reflects it so well that it’s illegible, but I would probably recognize the truck if I ever saw it again.

But, wait, isn’t this a game cam? Why, yes, it is.

These are no surprise. We see deer fairly often, especially at night.

I’m not sure what this is. We have foxes, of course, but it could be a coyote.

Probably a fox, although the tail does’t look as full. This fox visited the previous day, almost exactly 12 hours earlier.

I was afraid the camera would have lots of empty frames because of limbs moving in the motion detector field of view, but that turns out not to be a problem. Of the 800 or so images it has taken, most by far are of me. It has caught several contractor vehicles, and also the truck that services the portable toilet on the site. The resolution is reasonable, although there was just starting to be some pixilization on the images of the deer as I cropped it. The night shots are just OK, but that’s probably because the camera is too far from the subject.

I’m thinking about putting another one where it can catch anyone actually entering the garage. Right now the house is completely open, since we don’t have drywall between the garage and the kitchen, and we can’t put up garage doors until we have drywall.