I was keen to get back up to the cameras this week to see what had been happening with our squirrel at Yew View, who gave birth last week. I had been keeping an eye on this camera via the iCatcher app on my phone and was sad to see the female remove the kits when they were just 3 days old. I wanted to go back and look at the footage. It is quite common for this to happen but I have no idea where she has taken them. The clips showed she was only away about 4 minutes, so her new drew won’t be far away. I had hoped she move them into one of our other boxes, but sadly not. The clips below show here with the kits, that were growing really fast, and then her moving them one at a time.
Maybe she will move them back at a later date, or to one of the other boxes. We’ll have to wait and see, but it was lovely to have witnessed these few days in the life of a newborn squirrel!
The next cam of interest is our otter one. I am keeping a record of the frequency of visits and it seems that this individual and possibly another one, visit about every 2 – 3 days. It is always a bonus to get a colour clip, even if it is brief!
The kingfishers are still making regular visits, but they were upstaged somewhat this week with a spectacular Green woodpecker! I hear them all the time on the site and occasionally see them, but this one landed on the post and gave me the most brilliant views… what a stunner!
We were also treated to a couple of visits from the young Great spotted woodpecker too!
These stills were captured with the Bushnell Live view with the 46cm close-up lens. The stills were lifted from the video clips.
The Mandarin females have been spending time around the pond as well and used this post as a preening spot one morning, treating us to some beautiful clips. They are such pretty ducks.
We now have 3 swallow nests in the stable; 2 with chicks and one with eggs. I have cameras on both with chicks and they are growing at a tremendous rate! Here are some clips I lifted to show the chicks, which are about a week difference in age.
I also set the Bushnell up on this nest, with the 46cm lens on. It is a difficult location, due to the contrasts and relatively low light, but it coped quite well…
It is incredible to think that these little individuals will be heading off to Africa in just a matter of a month or so.
The badgers are still visiting our sett and two individuals have been using the camera sett this week. I have located the main sett that is in nearby woodland and hope to do some trail cam monitoring there over the next year or so to build up a picture of how our setts on site are used in conjunction to this main sett. This clips shows a very thin badger settling down. I presume this is an old individual. I have filmed him around out setts for the last year. He also visits the feeding station. Perhaps he has been ousted from the main sett, taking up residence in ours.
We are still getting some daylight footage as they tend to emerge around 8pm. It is always good to see them in daylight..
Some great captures this week, but I think the Green woodpecker takes the prize for me!
Comments