Outdoors
This X Account Makes Your Doorbell Camera Look Lazy
@Trail_Cams posts the best trail camera clips on the internet to more than 1.4 million followers. Start with one log over a creek, where a black bear, a bobcat and a bull elk all show up for their close-ups.
Somewhere in Sarasota right now, a doorbell camera is recording a palm frond moving slightly. That's the whole show. It has been the whole show since the day it was installed.
Then there's @Trail_Cams, an X account that posts trail camera footage from woods all over the world, and I say this as a person who owns too many trail cams: it's the best thing on my feed by a wide margin. More than 1.4 million people follow it. It doesn't have a bio. It doesn't need one. Start with this log.
— trailcam (@Trail_Cams) October 4, 2026
See it on X if the video doesn't load. Footage by Russ Gleixner, shared by @Trail_Cams.
One log, one minute 45 seconds
A fallen tree lies across a shallow creek, and one camera sits at the end of it watching a whole summer of foot traffic. A black bear opens the show by walking the log straight up to the lens until the frame is mostly nose. A bobcat takes the same route and gives the camera a long, suspicious sniff. A deer tiptoes along the trunk and hops off into the water. A doe and her fawn wade across. A bull elk with a full rack just stands in the creek like he's waiting for someone to notice the antlers.
Then the bears come back. One gets so close the screen is nothing but fur. Another strolls up the log like it pays rent there.
As of Thursday morning it had more than 15,000 likes and nearly 1,000 reposts. Every one of them earned.
Why the account works
No captions. No "wait for it." No music. Just the clip, and then a reply underneath crediting whoever strapped the camera to the tree, from individual camera owners to the University of Montana and Bhutan's forestry department. The animals get the screen time and the people get the credit. Very few accounts on the internet have figured out that arrangement.
It posts several times a day, too. This week alone brought a tiger who napped in the snow, got up and yawned directly into the lens (48,000 likes and counting), a mountain lion who seemed mildly offended to be filmed, a buck wearing a leafy branch on his antlers like a hat while a raccoon minded its own business, and a cow staring into the lens like it was waiting for a manager.
Meanwhile, on a Sarasota fence line
I have six trail cams strapped to trees and fence posts out east, which is roughly five more than a person needs. This month's combined footage: three raccoons, one armadillo, my own boots twice, and a sandhill crane walking past like it runs the HOA. I watched every second of it. I'd do it again.
Until one of mine gets a bear, follow @Trail_Cams and let the professionals handle it. Your doorbell camera will understand. It has to.
