It is easy to get complacent about the wildlife clips we are now regularly capturing at Yew View! The last 16 months of setting up cameras, fine-tuning cams, positioning, creating feeding stations and habitats, and we are now reaping the benefits. Every week, I set up different trail cameras on a range of scenarios, attempting to capture footage that is a bit different to the ‘norm’. I also head indoors to the main computer after the light has faded and look through the week’s footage. All the cameras record 24-7 and it is quite a job looking through it all, trying to not miss any good bits!
This week, I wanted to share some of the footage from the last two weeks, to give you an idea of the kind of clips I am able to lift every single week!! It is a complete privilege to be able to watch the comings and goings of all the wildlife in this wonderful garden on a weekly basis and I just wish BT would hurry up and get a decent broadband connection on site so I could live-stream some of these cameras and share the footage with an even wider audience.
If you follow me, you will know that the Kingfishers that hunt regularly from the wildlife pond remain to be one of my favourites. Every week, I have hours of footage of these jewels, both from a wired camera on a post and a Bushnell trail cam on a perch that I put in. This week, both male and female hunted every day from both the post and the perch. They have a high success rate from these perches. I am planning on getting microphones on some of the wired cams in the coming months as the ‘plop’ of them diving is just great. The Bushnell footage has sound and this clip below is a montage of this week’s best clips…
FOR ALL THESE CLIPS, CLICK ON THE COG ICON AND SELECT HD!
These clips were captured from the wired camera. I love this one as you can see the Kingfisher dive in the background and then bring the fish to the perch…
We have nearly finished the new badger sett on site and will be putting all the soil back on top at the end of next week. There has been quite a lot of action at the established sett and I placed some straw outside last week. That night, at both entrances, the badgers were quick to take it down into the sett. I love the way they gather it up and roll it backwards down the tunnels!
They are also visiting the feeding station every night.. along with the foxes. A few peanuts are thrown out there every night… enough to give us a good look at them but not to affect their natural foraging behaviour.
There are numerous bird feeding stations on site too, but many had been dominated by jackdaws, starlings, stock doves and magpies. For this reason, I set up one in a dog crate, as I had done at home. This has proved highly popular with all the smaller species who can now feed without being scared off by the rather domineering corvids and others. Here are a couple of clips from this week…
Finally, I set up a couple of trail cams and positioned the PTZ camera on some windfall apples… hoping to capture some clips of the redwings and fieldfares that are in the area. I have not succeeded with the trail cams yet, but managed a couple of clips from the PTZ…
This is pretty representative of a weekly collection of clips… pretty amazing eh? May be I should be approaching some TV programmes makers… there is certainly enough happening here for a ‘Year in the life of YewView’ wildlife series I think….
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