RoebuckCam in the garden

Wow.  Another first for the garden.  I posted recently some photos of the deer eating the ivy on the fence outside the gate but after that they didn't return until a few nights ago.  I saw that the ivy was stripped bare up to browsing height so I knew they had been back.  The perimeter of the garden is (more or less) rabbit proof so I always keep the gate shut at night to stop any rabbits getting in.  As there have been hardly any rabbits around for ages I decided to leave the gate open three nights ago to see what happened.  I set up the trusty old Wingscapes camera near the gate and I was also trying out a new Browning trail camera (more on that another time) on the foxes by the back door.  The Browning probably wasn't set up properly as it took over 6000 photos of foxes chewing peanuts (more on that another time as well!).  However, there were also these photos.

This is the first time a roe deer has been in the garden.  I checked the old Wingscapes but this was all it had managed. I think its reactions are about as slow as mine.

Two nights ago I was better prepared.  I set the Browning by the gate to record video but I can also extract still frames from the video.  Roe deer are small. To give you some idea the top of the gatepost is 1.27m (50 inches) high, so to the tops of his antlers he is only about 1m tall.

Looking through the recordings I can see that the buck stayed in the garden eating the ivy for quite a while.  He arrived at 0150, left at 0230, came back again at 0437 and left again at 0503.  Much of the time he was out of sight of this camera and I had forgotten to put a card in the other one!  However, here are three videos from the Browning.

Last night wasn't so good. When I got home just before ten the buck was already outside the (closed) gate and ran off. I left the gate open again and he returned during the night.  The video camera was in similar position to the previous night but it only took two useful shots as he walked in and later walked out.

And the Wingscapes wasn't much better than the night before!

I'll keep trying to get some colour stills and I plan to use two different camera positions tonight.