Documenting wildlife on the island
Watch highlights from our trail cam videos.
To help with SIT’s Natural Resources Inventory, we set up wildlife cameras at three locations on the island, set to record video for 45 seconds after being triggered by movement. Since then, the cameras have been downloaded and maintained by volunteers and have yielded some amazing footage! We've observed larger mammals like coyote and deer, which likely are using the island to hunt or forage, or as a stepping stone to move from the mainland to Strong Island. Other species caught on the cameras include raccoon, red fox, and the elusive fisher. We've also seen a variety of bird species, notably great horned owl and wild turkey.
White-tail deer fawns. Deer can easily swim to and from the island.
A doe and fawns engage in mutual grooming. It’s likely that only two of the three youngsters are her offspring.
We saw several clutches of wild turkey chicks with hens in the 2022 season, including this large family.
Great horned owls nest in the upland oaks and pines. We’ve often found pellets (regurgitated prey bits bound with feathers) under trees.
A coyote on patrol. These ubiquitous predators have no difficulty swimming to the island. At low tide, they can almost walk over from the outer beach, as seen in the still photo by Hardie Truesdale above.
A healthy red fox. Like coyotes, they are probably visitors rather than residents on the island; we haven’t observed any breeding activity.
Raccoons are everywhere, but not usually active during the day.
The fisher (sometimes wrongly called a fisher cat) belongs to the Mustelid family; they are rarely seen on Cape Cod.
Observant human visitors to the island sometimes spot our cameras.
Volunteer Jerry Evans does a lot of everything on the island, including maintaining and monitoring the trail cams.
