The best trail cameras for keeping an eye on your backyard wildlife

Daffodils flourishing in sidewalk cracks, pigeons and starlings congregating on overhead power lines, rats living in your apartment walls — no matter how urban humans strive to make our environments, nature’s flora and fauna will make themselves right at home next to us. Sometimes that’s cute, like Pizza Rat, sometimes it’s not, like Pescadero High’s recent feline transfer student. But if we’re going to be moving into their habitats and living alongside them anyway, we might as well get to know our furry new neighbors by going full Rear Window to surreptitiously observe their daily (and nightly) lives. And for that you’re going to need a trail camera. Here’s what to look for to get the most out of your backyard Big Brothering.

What the heck even is a trail camera?

Trail cameras are what you’ve got integrated into your smartphone but in a ruggedized (albeit largely immobile) casing — think, waterproof digital sensors outfitted with laser tripwires and IR vision. Like traditional cameras, trail cams come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and capabilities, all of which will determine how well the camera works in the environment you put it in.

“The human desire to observe wild animals without disturbing them goes back at least to hunter-gatherers who constructed blinds,” Kucera and Barrett write in A History of Camera Trapping. “Our ability to do so was greatly enhanced with the development of photography and other, even more recent, innovations such as small, portable batteries, electric lights, and digital equipment.”

Trail cameras already play an important role in field research, allowing scientists to remotely monitor habitats and herd movements, as well as in wildlife conservation and land management, for the same reasons. These devices can serve much the same purpose for citizen scientists and backyard photographers.

“The most common friction point [between people and wildlife] is the destruction of a yard or a garden, that’s currently what we get the most calls about,” Denys Hemen, Hospital Managerat the California Wildlife Center in Malibu, told Engadget, noting that Koi ponds are particularly popular attractions for both people and raccoons in Southern California.

Placing camera traps won’t do much to stop the local coyotes and falcons from eating the neighborhood cats, but the devices can help expose urbanites to the natural world around them, ease suburbanites’ fears about what comes sniffing around the trash at night and help rural landowners monitor the movements of game herds on their properties.

They’re also far preferable than the alternative, Hemen argues. “The worst case for animals is [homeowners] calling a trapper,” Heme said, explaining that in California, trapped animals cannot legally be relocated into the wild (to minimize disease transmission) and may be euthanized if they cannot be rereleased locally. So before you go calling animal control, maybe see what’s actually bustling in your hedgerow first.

Trail camera tests: Browning Strike Force Max HD vs Reolink Keen Ranger PT

There are as many trail camera brands on the market today as there are ways to fall out of a tree with iconic hunting names likeBrowning and Bushnell joined by OG trail cam maker Cuddeback and more recently established brands like StealthCam and SpyPoint. Cameras themselves run anywhere from the dozens to the hundreds of dollars and offer a huge variety of traits and accessories at every price point.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common features as they appear in our two test models: Browning’s mixed-modality Strike Force Max HD and the mid-range, solar-powered Keen Ranger PT from Reolink.