Monitoring Your Purple Martin Colony With Game Cameras - A Browning Trail Camera Review

Last year I learned a hard lesson.  Never say, "never" when it comes to owls, snakes, racoons, and other predators that could prey on your purple martins.  Never.  As I learned, you don't really know what's going on with your purple martin colony unless you are either sitting outside all night or you have positioned multiple game cameras around your site.  If you ignore the possibility, then you could end up with lots of dead martins and even lose your entire colony.
Sitting in my yard all night was just not realistic for me, so I chose the latter option.   I quickly shopped for game cameras after noticing that my Trendsetter was not filling up like it had in years past and finding a GHO feather in my driveway escalated my sense of urgency.  After reading the reviews for multiple brands and shootout results (good site to see all trail camera reviews here), I decided to try out a Browning Trail Camera - Recon Force XR Series (BTC-2XR).  It has some nice features, including long detection range and the ability to record video.
My purple martin gourd rack - 7-2-2014- 8:20 PM.

My first impression when I opened the box is that the camera is small and compact and the casing has a high-quality, heavy duty plastic feel.  My second impression was, "whoa - this takes a LOT (8) of batteries!".

The Recon Trail Camera User Interface

After loading it with batteries and an SD card, I was able to poke around the very user-friendly buttons and quickly setup the date and time.  I had read about all the features while shopping, but I hadn't realized there were features within features.  Read on to see what features I find most attractive in this game camera.
Features
The camera has 4 capture modes: Trail Cam, TimeLapse, TimeLapse+ and Video Mode.
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