Eurasian Woodcock - Scolopax rusticola - Acorn 6210MC

Fig 1.   Frame one of set

I was checking cameras today and discovered this Woodcock had rather conveniently worked its way through the frame, while looking for food in the ground litter. These beautiful birds are not often seen during the day, unless disturbed, but this far north we have about twenty hours of daylight at this time of the year; so many creatures more associated with the night will be active, on and off, throughout the day.

Fig 2.   Frame two of set

The camera was set to shoot three stills and a video on each trigger and I decided to use this set to show off the exposure quality and stability that the 6210 is capable of.

Figures 1 and 2 are the first two frames of the set of three stills. Figure 3 is the third frame and I have cropped it to 800 x 600 pixels to show the full size quality. Apart from resizing and cropping, all three files are as they left the camera which was set to the 5MP setting, producing a file size of 1.18MB and an image size of 2560 x 1920 pixels. The incorrect date was operator error but miraculously the time was correct to within a few minutes.

Bottom is the 20 second video.

Water in the Ltl Acorn 6210 control panel - Review - Part 5

Acorn 6210 water/condensation problem update 07.07.2012

I'm very happy and relieved to be able to say that the reason for the condensation problem in the Ltl Acorn 6210 Trail Camera has been identified.

After lengthy tests and analysis the cause of water getting into the control panel is, at long last, understood; and some final changes to the case upgrade are now being made.

I don't know exactly how long this will take, but it will be as fast as possible.

I will post a full explanation of the problem and how it was solved at a later date. Users of cameras which have this problem should remove the rubber bung (external power supply input) from the base of the camera.
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Back to Part 4 of the review

Ltl Acorn control panel

I was about to do a post on this issue when I received a comment from a reader who also had this problem.

Because of its importance, I've slipped it in as part 5 of the review.  Trigger speed and Sensitivity, plus side by side working examples will start in part 6.

Don't do this with wet hands and cover up if it's raining

I've found nothing to suggest that the seal around the bottom panel leaks. What happens is that moisture transferred to the control panel surface will find it's way to the switches on the circuit board; and cause the screen to flicker through all the functions.

In my case, I was checking cameras on a rainy day, and with one camera I had the control panel door open and it started raining. I was in the menu at the time and finished what I was doing with wet hands. I tried drying them by wiping on my shirt but even the small amount of water that was left was enough. The problem is exacerbated by the panel being horizontal with the door closed; and gravity does the rest with water wicking down the control buttons onto the switches below.

The problem is easy enough to avoid. Don't open the door in rain without covering up, and don't press any buttons with wet fingers.

If you have moisture in the control panel, don't try to continue using it. Take the camera to a warm dry environment, open the door and lay the camera on it's back; and if possible, place it on the top of, or near a radiator. Make sure the radiator isn't so hot that it will damage the camera and if you have bags of desiccant, place them over and under the open door. Leave the camera like this for as long as possible up to a week and it should be OK.

If the problem persists, the only thing for it will be to remove the control panel cover so that the water can evaporate more effectively. This is a delicate job and care should be taken to avoid losing any bits, or causing any damage that would invalidate your warranty.

Make sure to remove all the battery cells before you do any of the above.

It's also important to realise that these cameras are an almost sealed box when the bottom door is closed; which means that any moisture trapped inside the case will alternately condense and evaporate with changing external temperatures. 


This will for example, manifest itself by fogging the lens when the ambient temperature rises after a cold night.


When attempting to dry out a camera, always have the bottom door open; and in extreme circumstances the case front may have to be removed to allow moisture to evaporate.

Wildlife reactions to trail cameras

Following on from the last post, I had the ProStalk set up over peanuts in the same area and as well as the squirrel, this was visited by badger and pine marten.

The video clip below shows a badger taking notice of the visible infra red when the camera switched on. Badgers and pine martens don't seem at all bothered by this and after their initial interest, will carry on as normal. Almost invariably, pine martens will come and give the camera a close up inspection and on a number of occasions where the camera has been set close to the ground, they have marked the camera by urinating over it. The first time this happened I thought the camera was a bit sticky when I went to check the card, and afterwards, as I looked at the video clips, I realised why.

This is not the case with other wildlife. Red Deer will always be nervous and shy away from the camera if they come close or it is directly in their path. Urbanised foxes, although nervous, do seem to tolerate the IR glow after a while, but out here where foxes are really wild, all you'll usually see is the light in their eyes as they keep to the edge of the illuminated area and skirt round and away.

Close by another camera caught these Red Deer hinds and I think a yearling calf, in the early morning light.

More from the snowy north

Weather turned again on the weekend and went from no snow to over 30cm by Sunday morning. I think we must have had about 60cm overall but with the ground warmer it was thawing all the time.

Still snow on the ground today but it's going fast.

I moved the trail camera from the Badger Sett on Friday night and set it up on a Deer trail where it stayed until Sunday. The camera was over where the trail crossed a stream in a steep sided ravine and being about half way down, I had to struggle a bit to retrieve it. Didn't capture any Deer but the clip below shows an interesting transition back into winter.

I've been doing some more tests with the Prostalk PC2000 in preparation for writing a review which should appear in a couple of days or so, and tomorrow it returns to the Badger Sett to continue monitoring their activity patterns. We're fast approaching another full moon and with the nights getting shorter I'm interested to see if their evening emergence is getting any closer to dusk.

Wildlife on Principal

I've always been driven by a desire to portray wild life forms, undisturbed in their natural habitat and I consider it a great privilege when I have the opportunity to observe animal behaviour in its natural environment. I have never photographed animals in any form of captivity, restraint or distress.

I hunt quietly and unobtrusively with a camera and if I can't get a shot there will always be another time.

Having got that off my chest I'll briefly explain my attitude. I grew up on my Father's farm in the 1950s when life was very different from today. Hunting, shooting and fishing were very much a part of life and I certainly did my fair share of each. My boyhood dream was to be a gamekeeper and it wasn't until I became one that I realised it was the lifestyle and environment that attracted me rather than the shooting of game. Along with numerous disagreements with the head keeper about just what level of threat some of the so called vermin species really constituted to a pheasant reared in captivity, the proverbial straw was the issue of pole traps around rearing pens.

For the benefit of readers who don't know how it worked, pheasant chicks were hatched under broody hens in closed and protected cages. When they were old enough they were transferred to rearing pens in the estate forests where they were afforded a degree of protection prior to full release in the autumn. In those days it was the practise of some to set juby traps on the tops of the fence poles. These traps are a pair of sprung metal jaws with a release plate at their centre and anything landing on it was caught by the legs and found hanging upside down from the top of the pole the next morning.

I was taught that when contemplating an action likely to affect something else, I should first think about it from the something else's point of view and decide if it was a reasonable plan of action. Well I can't speak for others but I don't think I would want to spend any amount of time hanging like that and as the only thing these traps ever seemed to catch were Owls; which are not the remotest threat to pheasants of that age, I could see no justification for the practise and said so.

Well, my days as a gamekeeper were numbered and I eventually moved on; but the value of the lesson was a respect for all life forms. Don't get the impression that I'm some airhead in green wellies who thinks everybody should live on carrots because I'm not. I don't have a problem with deer stalking, fishing etc., either as population control or for the pot but I don't see killing anything as a sport and I don't see captive wild animals as an easy photo' opportunity.