Getting up to Date

Still catching up from earlier in the year.  By now I've explored and found a second badger latrine on a different part of the land.  The trail camera shows it being well used each night and here is an example from March 2018.  Sorry the quality isn't the best but at this point I still only had my Apeman cameras, better than nothing but very grainy in the dark.

A blessing in disguise when one of the Apeman cameras stopped recording.  Luckily it was still under guarantee and I got a very quick refund from Amazon.  Say what you like about Amazon, it's an excellent service.  So this time, having well and truly gotten the trail camera bug, I decided to invest in something much better.  The following is one of the first videos from the new Browning Recon Force Extreme bought through Nature Spy at £169.99 with a free 16GB SD card.  Over twice the price of the Apeman, but in my opinion worth every penny.  Turn the sound up and you hear the badger snuffling up the handful of peanuts I'd scattered to keep him in front of the camera for more than two seconds.

 

Now into April and for the first time I tried a camera down by the river.  I was lucky enough to see this otter!  I'd heard that there are otters in the river but wasn't sure if that was true and had certainly never seen one. Shame I had to put the Apeman down there as I'd already set the Browning up elsewhere for the badgers.  Have tried a few times since and not seen it again, just the inevitable badger!

  

Now into May and "almost" getting bored with badgers (no not really!) so although this isn't a great video of the badger, it was gratifying to see a Tawny Owl fly in and land on the middle post of the picture.  Perfect!

The is the image I've been waiting for for the past four months.  Finally the briefest glimpse of a fox last night!  What a relief.  When I played the video I could only glimpse something passing by very quickly, which at first I thought was just a rabbit, but it didn't look right.  Played it back in slow motion and found this, only just in frame but unmistakable!  At first glance it's just nettles, but top left of centre Mr (or Mrs) Fox is just about showing his/her face,

My relief will be more understandable when you realise that I live directly next door to hunt kennels.  But more about that at a later date.  Let's concentrate on the positives for now. Thrilled with this,  hopefully it will be back and I can get some decent videos.