Muntjac sniffing about. HD with sound..Pt 3

Badger rooting about in leaves

Fallow calf

Fallow calf

Fallow buck in daytime

Fallow buck in velvet

Tawny owl flies at trail camera

Muntjac doe (followed by buck 20 seconds later)

Muntjac buck follows doe

Roe doe licking kid

Roe doe with twins

Black fallow runs past

Fallow hind and calf

fallow with calf daytime

Fallow with calf at night

Tawny owl fly past

Roe buck walking past

Young muntjac buck walking past

Blonde badger /erythristic morph

I had heard the myths,but never seen any myself until now when one of the camera traps has picked up some snaps of the legendary blonde badger.Stories abound,some fantastical and far fetched like the one we heard as kids of blonde badgers being previously like normal black and white badgers but were thrown out of their setts in broad sunlight by the others for doing some cardinal wrong like fraternising with foxes and the harsh sun had bleached their fur.Never seen with the others they were relegated to a solitary life of loneliness while being even shirked by their former foxy friends who found the now weird looking blonde badgers not striking enough to hang about with.Other country myths said they were ghosts of badgers not quite in the process of leaving this earth and wandered about forever seeking that sett in the sky that eluded them.That superstitious rural Sussex of the early`70,s that i was brought up in has long gone along with the characters that I came across on my childhood ramblings but their stories still live on in memory as do my memories of them.....

Red fox scratching

2Roe buck in velvet

Mandarin duck flying off the log

Hen pheasant flies off log

Fallow calf jumping log

Badger walking along a log

Mink marking log over stream

Curiousity of the fallow calf

The curiousity of young,in this case youngish animals always amazes me and a calf of this herd of fallow deer had a good go at the camo net around the trailcam.It,s just one of those things that animals do so i wasn,t too bothered and at least the cam still managed to take pics and the net didn,t obscure the lens too much.I often wish that we had bears in this country to take pictures of but then i realise how such powerful beasts can trash a cam totally after seeing some of the posts of our fellow camera trappers over in America......

Fox carrying carrion at night

I think it,s some sort of dead bird this fox has found,whatever it is i,m sure it will go down well as food is a bit hard to come by at moment,even the worms they often eat will be thin on the ground as it,s been so dry and frosty........

Snow covered South Downs

Mystery cat in West Sussex

Never had a domestic cat in 9 months on the trail cam before at this farm and 1 week in a different part of the wood it,s picked up what looks like a big feral cat so nothing to get excited about.Hopefully the cam will get closer shots of this cat so it,s size and type can be confirmed but have no corresponding pictures of other animals in the same place yet to verify it,s size but the lack of an extra long tail would discount it from what we are really after.....

rear view of roe doe at night

 

Roe doe in the winter sun

 

Roe buck in velvet scratching

 

1st year roe doe eating leaf

 

roe doe in a bit of snow

 

Flock of woodpigeons feeding in wood

I like woodpigeons,they have a strange attractiveness about them something about that greyish colour which is offset by the whitish bars on their wings and around their neck.Photographed under ultra violet light the white bars are extremely vivid and visible from a long way off.The ones on their wings signal to each other and are magnified by flapping so the rest of the flock are notified of the others actions like a good feeding spot or danger.The neck bars play a role in mating behaviour.Woodpigeons eyes are very sensitive to the ultra violet areas of the light spectrum and so can pick this up very easily as well as the colours of various plants they eat that are very visible at this range too.Now that,s an idea,a type of trail camera that instead of picking up infra red,picks up ultra violet instead or as well as.The bird at the front in the first pic is a sort of advanced guard while the others are waiting in the wings,up in tree branches to be more precise and they won,t come down to feed for quite some while,an hour in this case until they are quite sure the first sacrificial birds are safe.Strangely enough when spooked these same first to feed birds are often the last to fly off........

More fox,a roe buck and a woodcock at night

A few more fox pics and a young roe buck showing off his new antler buttons....

Where are all the woodcock pics off the trail cameras?I was asked recently for last winter i had loads showing them probing through the leaves in ones,twos and threes.Back then it was very cold from november onwards and these little birds feed more in the woods when it,s frosty and frozen where it,s sheltered and they can more easily probe with their beaks in the softer leaf litter.Not so this winter with temperatures on most days in double figures, the nights barely dropping below 5 and only the second batch of frosts coming last week which have enabled the woodcock to keep on feeding out on the open pastures,not in the woods where my cameras are.Still time yet for some more pics of them but this is all i,ve got so far........

The (dead)squirrel,the stoat,then a fox

Still on the squirrel theme i placed this squirrel carcase in front of the cam to see what would happen.Predictably the local squirrel took a look but never hung around the area while the carcase was there,a stoat showed up but didn,t touch it(only the second time i,ve captured an image of a stoat)then it took a few passes before a fox decided to take it.Coincidentaly,Camera trap Codger placed a squirrel carcase in front of one of his cams around the same time but on the other side of the world and incredibly another squirrel took it(see his post in the blog list)I don,t often bait my camera traps but when i do there is often something of interest so may do it a bit more......