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........

Muntjac in daylight

I couldn,t resist posting this snap of a farm cat.The muntjacs are showing nicely in front of the cam in daylight but i expect this to change once we get back to normal season wise as it feels like it,s a month behind and we are still in october.There,s still a fair amount of leaf on the oaks and some ponds i have seen from all across the county are dry as a bone.......

Roe fawn eating mushrooms

This roe fawn is eating mushrooms.This was the last time that any of the trail cameras have recorded this type of behaviour from the deer.We have had such a mild and dry autumn overall,about 3 or 4 degrees above the norm,that it,s been only a below average mushroom crop and yet all species of deer have been targeting them specifically.I don,t know why but mushroom eating amongst deer rarely ever gets a mention and if it does(no pun!)is right at the last of their stated food lists.I always thought that they went for the nuts more but not so or maybe just when the fungi are not quite ready yet....

Leaf litter

Mixed bag from set C.No story to tell,no behaviour to comment on just a collection of pictures of animals out and about on their daily activities.The pics stretch out over a month though ,earliest first and show just how deep the leaf litter has got......

Fallow buck eating mushroom

Just by the rabbits nose in the second pic is the mushroom that the buck later eats,although there is a white fleck on the skin that shows that the rabbit may or may not of taken a piece of it Alice in Wonderland style the trail camera does seem to show that rabbits are not big fans of shrooms.The huge fallow buck though eats not only this big fully ripe shroom but also the half ripe ones next to it or at least just the caps and not the indigestible stalks.I had lightened the pics via Picassa 3 however the viewing improvement hasn,t come through Blogger so each pic needs to be enlarged to actually see not only the mushrooms themselves but the chewing of the deer.All the shrooms that came up in front of this trailcam got hammered by one species of deer or another in a short space of time,i don,t know what species of mushroom they are and i don,t recognise them on any "fit for humans list" but the deer must find them very good to eat.All types of deer are noticeable by their absence in the open fields but a wander through any thick woods about now will throw up sightings of deer......

Muntjac buck eating mushroom

Checked my string of 4 trail cameras this week,3 hadn,t been looked at for over a month so i,ve been treated to more than 15000 pics to check.As a big cat is due to pass any of them all photos,especially the night ones, are scrutinised carefully with the shadows lightened to show up anything lurking there.It,s one hell of a lot of pictures with few duds which just goes to show the intense wildlife activity going on at the moment in the woods.The deer are very active even feeding in daytime and whilst i knew they ate fungi i never realised how much they went for them or that they left them until they are fully ripe.Only the big chesnuts are being eaten but all mushrooms are taken as soon as they are ripe,literally within hours as the next lot of pics will show of a fallow buck eating fungi.....

Careful now!

Not the best place to stick up a trailcam this isn,t but i was champing at the bit to put 1 here.The place offers everything a bigcat would want at this time of year and when i asked the farmer for permission and told him this he very kindly said i could put it up for as long as i liked so the chance to put a cam up in this wood had to grasped with both hands"but careful now!Be warned,people wander all over the place since the Open Access bill came in,i,ve even had people wandering around the garden,pointing at maps and walking right into the house asking if i did cream teas"in fact,his garden had been mistakenly included in the Access area,his house was,incredible but believeable considering the last (hopeless)labour government we had,listed as a tea shop and he had to go to some office somewhere to get it all taken off.Well i,ve taken some risks in putting the cam up in some places just to try and get that Golden Fleece of pictures on the understanding that most people seeing something not guarded wouldn,t just take it but now i just can,t afford to take those sort of risks as i just can,t afford to replace it for the foreseable future and although i,m not sure even if the person in the picture saw the cam it does mean that someone goes there and that,s dangerous for the cam.......

Only 2 Fallow counted

There was only 2 Fallow pictured on the cam when i checked it today,this was after 2 weeks set up at a place to see how many are there.There,s something not right here,although there were plenty of rabbits,pheasants,squirrels and crows no roe at all,i know they do tend to stick to the dense woods in the wet and windy weather we,ve been having recently but this place is as sheltered as can be.The object was to give the farmer some pictures of wildlife to look at and hopefully tell him how much protection the trees he,s planning to plant next month would need beyond the usual trunk guards.If the place was heaving with deer the trees might want to be ring fenced as well as the other measures to stop them eating them which can get really expensive but in this case i would imagine he would want to concentrate on stopping the rabbits as there were loads of them.So where have all the deer gone?Is the question i,d like to answer and of course i,m looking at the bigcat possibilty straight away.A fortnight ago there was that fox carcase and the other subjects missing from the cam were the foxes as well plus the 2 dead myxy rabbits i stashed for the foxes and badgers to find were still there where i left them although very rotten and riddled with beetles,this in itself is incredible.If there was a fox within a mile it would of found that sort of thing and so would of a badger.The farm and the surrounding area is fairly quiet at this time of year there and so i,ve been allowed to carry on and try to get to the bottom of this mystery so the trailcam stays put,also next week once the fields dry out a bit after all this rain we,ve had there will be a better chance to have a look round for any more evidence as to what,s going on.....

Another deer counting request

Halloween marks the end of my agricultural year and apart from a few chores to be done in the winter it,s a break from this lark for me till early spring.The week till bonfire night is a time to have a few drinks with people i,ve worked with and collect any money owed and bonfire night will be celebrated at Lewes,the capital of bonfires.How the jungle drums have been beating for a chat today over a glass of whisky on the kitchen table and the best lamb sandwich i,ve had all year another request to do a deer count with the trailcam has been made.Apparently the usually large numbers of roe have dwindled rapidly with a distinct lack of teenage fawns and some pretty strange goings on at night have been witnessed particularly some chickens have gone missing and this is while they were enclosed by a 7ft fence laced with electric wire,few feathers have been found and no carcases just a brief bit of squawking has been heard and that,s it.The location?Well this has to remain secret but it,s in the Horsham cats home range.I was asked to look round the place to see what i could find and while the Glasgow whisky coursed at top speed through my veins,i certainly didn,t find any chicken carcases but what did catch my rapidly blurring eyes was what appeared to be part of a young fox skeleton maybe lying there for 2 weeks or more along with some large scat with fur in it (pictured)What else did i notice?Well there were a lot of pigeon feathers about and their moult around august time,i think,is well gone,they are on the woodland floor a lot at the moment scoffing acorns,the beech mast is mostly gone,they are being caught by something it looks like to me .I,m not saying a bigcat has and i,m not saying a fox hasn,t but something has and they might not be as easy to catch as in the summer but a pigeon on the ground is worth hundreds in the bushes as any predator will tell you.I did also find some deer slots,not many but a few,both roe and fallow but no young roe slots that i could see.So ,anyway, reason enough to strap the cam to a tree and see what sort of deer numbers are here without me having to hang around on cold mornings like i used to(i love trailcams!)Unfortunately this is primarily a deer counting exercise therefore any other wildlife pictures will be an added bonus although the cam is mounted high up so the view will be downward looking which won,t make for appealing looking pictures.As my friend there has no interest in the bigcat subject"your,e wasting your time"he laughed"they don,t exist,just big ferals and mistaken identitys,show me some photos that you have taken that are clearly bigcats and i,ll believe you".Well i,ve no wish to tell anyone what is or isn,t on their ground without that sort of glorious proof and i,ve no desire to convince any other sceptics for that matter,everone is entitled to their own opinions,all i will say is that i wouldn,t waste 1 second of my time doing this if i hadn,t seen them for myself and know for certain that they do exist and are about,affecting the other wildlife for people like me to discover the effects......