Six wild boar, two pigeons and a fox

Here's some assorted videos from our trail camera for you... First, the largest group of wild boar we've seen yet, and the first time the male is with the others:

Next, one wood pigeon chasing another one in front of the camera:

And finally, two videos of a fox. First, in the early morning, with the camera still in infra-red mode, and then later in the day, but also with an unidentified creature running very fast the other way along the path - any ideas what it is? It's about 8 seconds in, and you'll probably want to switch the video to HQ mode to see it.


We've now moved the trail camera to the other side of the wayleave, into the wood that my friend Alex owns. It's by an animal trail and a seasonal stream (dry at present), so it'll be interesting to see what it picks up...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Trail camera: A fox and a butterfly

We finally have some interesting wildlife on our trail camera! Here's a video of a fox having a sniff around our pond:

Here's a more bizarre one. What I think happened is a butterfly landed on the camera, triggering the motion sensor, and then proceeded to crawl over the lens while it was recording. Given the colours visible, and what I know is flying around the pond right now, I think it was a White Admiral.


Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Footprints in the snow

The view out the window this morning was:
We drove to the wood and parked at the bottom of the wayleave, which had a thin covering of snow:As we walked up we were keeping an eye out for animal tracks - I've tried to identify them, but feel free to correct me, as I'm not an expert tracker! The first one we saw was a fox, which had padded its way down the track:
I stopped for a quick photo along the footpath where we've been cutting:
Next up was a bird, possibly a blackbird from the size of the prints, and the fact that they were in pairs (from hopping?), but I'm not really sure:
and after that a pheasant, clearly walking rather than hopping like the smaller birds do:
Then we reached the wood
The first tracks here were human and dog:
It was interesting as we wandered round the wood looking at the footprints to see how many people had walked their dogs through our wood this morning, and where they'd come from.

Inside the wood we could see where a squirrel had been:
including up on the log piles:
and our of our outdoor "tables":
Before we did any work we walked around the wood - it's not often we get to see it in the snow.
Although today it did keep snowing for a while in the morning:That's all for now - I'll do another post tomorrow with some pictures of a robin, a goldcrest and wren.

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Management planning and a fox.

We had a meeting today in the woods. Steve Wheatley came to advise us and some of the other woodland owners on management of the woods for biodiversity. Steve's particular focus is on butterflies, but he knows about other wildlife too, as he's trained in conservation, ecology and other useful things! We had people from Grist Wood and Fantail Wood, and we were representing my parents as well as our own wood.

Steve gave us lots of useful advice on designing a management plan that will work for parts of the wood and the wood as a whole - we have some work to do now...

One thing that's clear now is our plan for this winter's work - we'll be coppicing a few metres at the edge of the rides and footpaths that run along and through our wood, creating "scalloped" areas at intervals as mini-clearings and to break up any wind-tunnel effect. We'll also be avoiding damage to the occasional interesting trees along the way, such as a few youngish oaks (very pleased to see these!), hornbeam and holly - simply because they're different to everything else growing there, so add to the diversity. We may also find a few chestnut stems we can leave to grow on as standards, maybe increasing their nut production...

After everyone had gone, I wandered off on my own with the camera. The wood is still full of birds and stuff, you just can't see them as easily because of the leaves. I managed to get a couple of shots of a blue tit though:
I saw a coal tit too, plenty of different butterflies and a huge dragonfly, though it wouldn't sit still for a picture! It's amazing how much you see when you stop and stand still for a few minutes...

Most exciting though was getting to the style from the wayleave onto the public footpath and seeing a fox! It was nearly 100 metres away and about to disappear round the bend in the path, so I didn't have time to get a good photo as I had the camera set up for the sunny wayleave, not the shady wood, but here's a blurry cropped image of the fox:
We thought they were in the wood, but this is the first one we've seen. Cool!

Anyway, got to go, there's a lot to do, as we've just rented a garage out the back of our flats (sharing with a neighbour), so there's stuff to be sorted and moved...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.