Tuesday 24 January 2012

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........

Friday 20 January 2012

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........

Thursday 5 January 2012

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......