Another week of great clips from Yew View! With us heading towards August, more fledglings hit the skies above the site, as our swallows fledged along with the wagtails. Both these families have benefitted hugely from the healthy populations of insects on site and parents regularly appeared with beaks crammed with invertebrates.
The swallow chicks were soon sitting on the edge of the cub, stretching their wings and building up flight muscles with frantic wing flapping, before popping off the nest cup to the stable door and then back.
The wagtail nest, that I discovered last week… had chicks that were nearly 2 weeks old or so. I only managed a week’s worth of filming before they left as well. They are upstairs in the stable and the fledglings spend a few days hopping around up there, being fed by the parents, before they head on out into the courtyard.
The Kingfisher post yielded some interesting clips this week. The young tawny returned a couple of times, spending quite a lot of time preening on the post. As the camera is set up for smaller birds, it is rather annoying to lose its head off shot a lot of the time, so I have moved the camera slightly this week to try to capture more of it. It was wonderful to watch it preen and also, to watch it carefully clean its huge talons!
I have set the Bushnell trail cam up facing this perch this week as well, so hopefully this beauty will return.
It was also great to see a couple of female wood ducks appear on this perch. We had one visit few months ago, but I have not seen them again. Wood ducks nest in holes in trees, so we may have to get a suitable nest box up for them, to try to encourage them to return and breed here…
Last week, I put some hay outside one of the badger sett chambers after we had filmed a coupe of individuals taking hay into the sett chamber. Again, they responded to this new bedding, puling it into the chamber!
Other than a few, fleeting visits, no more time was spent in here, sadly.
I did capture so other clips from outside the other badger sett. There has not been a lot of badger activity in this sett in the last week, but I captured this interesting clip of, what appears to be a badger dragging the carcass of a buzzard into the sett! Badgers are omnivores and opportunists when it comes to food. This buzzard could have been killed on the road and found by this individual… interesting footage…
We had a ‘first’ this week as well, when I captured this fleeting glimpse of a stoat on site. I knew they must be around but, despite having lots of cameras and Bushnells around, I have captured a couple of clips of weasels, but no stoats. There is certainly a lot of prey on site, so I am hoping we will see more of this feisty little character…
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