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.....

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......

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.....

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........

Fox catches squirrel

This fox hunting a squirrel has appeared to be doing it for some weeks now but it,s the first time i,ve caught it on camera.In the first pic the squirrel can be seen in the top left of the picture and in the next pic is caught.To the extreme right of the 3rd picture shows another squirrel safely on a branch,there has been quite regularly 2 squirrels scampering about here together.After that another squirrel pokes about and then the fox shows up again quite obviously after another one.I,ve never seen a picture of this happening before and can only remember finding a squirrel carcase that could of been attributed as a fox kill only once before.Some foxes,like most predators,can specialise in targeting certain quarry.

Annoyingly though i checked this cam today to find that the card had filled to 6000 odd pics,still with battery life left mind and had left the last 2 weeks unguarded so to speak.I last checked it a month ago and have been cutting it a bit close to the bone every time as this spot is a hive of,mostly squirrel and rabbit,activity as each time the card has been close to filling or the batteries near to running out.Who knows what has happened at this camspot in the meantime in fact noone will ever know so it,s every 2 weeks to check from now on,live and learn as they say.....

Muntjac and fawn lying down at night

What are they up to these 2?The fawn at the back seems to be submissive(expected)of the doe and they are the 2 that have featured regularly on this blog.In the last pics the fawn appears to try and suckle but it must be getting a bit old for that now although the last pics of it doing this in front of the cam were not that long ago so the doe may be weaning it.These fawns spend at least their first year with their dams so she might be discouraging it from suckling but gently so it stays with her.......

2 foxes curled up

It,s strange how things can happen in groups.Earlier on in the year the infra red flash from the camera traps was,if not scaring,at least making them more wary ,this month though most subjects appear well at ease and accepting what is an alien object in a semi-natural enviroment.I have had a fox curl up in front of the cam before but not 2 so this sequence of pics may show a dog fox and then a vixen show up who have either mated before or maybe just bonded many weeks before mating.Or they could be sibling cubs.I suspect the former......

Fox gets starling that fell from roost

I knew that foxes and big cats wandered beneath rookerys for fallen or fledging chicks especially after storms but i didn,t know until i saw it on Autumnwatch once that in very hard weather foxes,at least, had been observed snatching up fallen birds dying from the cold.The bird does look head up and alive in the first 2 pics but definitely dead by the third.Why this bird ended up on the ground we don,t know but what does seem obvious that when this fox showed up later after the badger did the badger was in the distance and came no nearer.I,ve seen this before and i can only presume that a sense of ownership,for want of a better word,exists from the predator that made the kill.In other words if say the badger had got the starling first it would then most likely have dominance in the area in the aftermath over the same fox.A sort of "finders keepers losers weepers" mentality.......