The rhythm of the adders' year is a bit surprising (to me at least). They go into hibernation at the end of summer, when it is still quite warm, and the males emerge from hibernation in February when it is cold. It seems odd but it obviously works for them. I went to north Northumberland to see them this week on a bright sunny day but the air temperature was only 2℃ and there was snow on the nearby hills. The adders come out an hour or so after sunrise and lie on the bank soaking up the rays. Males are quite dark before their first moult and that helps absorb more heat. They also flatten their bodies to increase the area exposed. Next month the males will be silver and black after shedding their skins so they look at their best when the females emerge. The first one I found was in a typical posture.
They don't move much but when I walked by a bit later it had changed position slightly.
And another wriggle a bit later on.
This one was 200m or so farther along and was also quite large.
It had also adjusted when I came back.
Unfortunately there is new wire fencing along part of the bank. The snakes don't mind but it makes it harder to get a decent photo.
It is a bit better zoomed in. The snakes often lie with their heads partly hidden like this.
Being cold blooded means they have a fairly relaxed programme. After emerging from hibernation adders don't feed before they mate in May. Females breed only every other year and give birth to live young around August time. This is the fifth year in a row I have been to see the adders and I have been successful on every visit. I'll go again next month in the hope that they have shed their old skins by then.
We had a little bit of wet snow this morning, the first of the winter. I wasn't surprised when the sparrowhawk turned up because he has been here every day recently. The kestrel has also been around a lot in the past few days so I was pleased to get his photo sitting on the gate, although it was a long shot through a rainy window. It was interesting that the birds on the feeders 20m away took no notice of him, even though they do sound the alarm if he flies over or through the garden. And they panic at the first hint of a sparrowhawk.
Most of this month's recordings have been in the pipe below the sluice gate and have picked up the dog otter on his rounds. I haven't seen the mother and pups in the pipe since last autumn and now that the sluice gate has been raised I suspect climbing up it or jumping down would be a bit much for the pups. The dog otter takes it in his stride. On average he goes through the pipe about once a night. Here are a few traverses (and scratchings).
Another session with the cameras in the pipe before Storm Ciara yielded more comings and goings by the dog otter. On one night I had set two cameras about 100m apart. He found the first one overlooking a stream but was so close to it we don't get a clear view. Eight minutes later he was sniffing the other camera as he went through the pipe.
Two nights later and he settled down for a good, if rather inelegant, scratch before continuing on his patrol.
On another night he did the patrol in reverse, sniffing the camera while heading south through the culvert and then sniffing the camera in the stream nine minutes later. This time he seemed to have caught something to eat as he went back into the stream, presumably a small fish.
After Storm Dennis the water was so high I couldn't put cameras near the stream or in the culvert so I tried elsewhere. For the moment I have lost track of the mother and her pups but all that means is that they didn't come ashore in the one place I can position the cameras near the edge of the lake in the three nights I tried. With the present high water levels they probably have more places to explore so I'll keep trying to track them down.
It has been a strange winter so far with few frosts and no snow. So there has been very little opportunity to take photos of animals or birds on ice. When I reached the pool this time I didn't even realise it was frozen until this young heron decided to walk across it. It was moving very gingerly, trying not to fall over, and I expect it had never seen ice before.
A few more pictures from the broken bridge. Once again the badger didn't turn up until after 4am, by which time the (rechargeable) batteries in my auxiliary infrared LEDs were completely flat. I had two cameras, as before, one a low-glow and one a no-glow infrared. The no-glow camera really does benefit from the extra light from the low-glow. Each camera will only record for 20s at night, with a short break of 0.5-2.5s before it switches on again. And they aren't synchronised, so they don't trigger or switch on and off together.
In this first video clip, from the no-glow camera, I have edited out the bits where the other camera wasn't on so we have good resolution and high contrast to give a fairly good image with little processing. The badger arrived from the left and stayed in the downsloping position for several minutes while it hoovered up most of the peanuts. It went onto the bridge but soon turned round when it realised all the peanuts were at one end. You can see the extra shadow from the light from the other camera which is off to the right. Unlike otters and foxes, badgers seem to take no notice of the infrared light.
The next clip shows how this camera performs using its own light (wavelength 940nm) with and then without additional (850nm) light from the low-glow. This clip is unadjusted but it is possible to increase the contrast with iMovie.
The third video is from the low-glow camera. This one shows almost no effect from the no-glow switching on and off. Its raw image is a bit "flat", ie lacking in contrast, but it adjusts well in iMovie and I think has generally better resolution, also apparent on the frame grabs.
It also records better sound, although it was slightly closer to the stream. The badger here is sniffing out the last few peanuts. Remember it is doing this in total darkness, so the precision of its nose is astonishing. I read that a badger's sense of smell is nearly 1000 times more sensitive than ours.
*My BT broadband connection has now been upgraded to "Superfast" (at no extra cost!). My download speed is now a dizzy 5.4 Mbps and the upload has trebled to 1.2 Mbps so it now takes only 20 minutes to upload a 60s video whereas previously it took an hour. These three clips took less than an hour instead of two and a half hours. Progress.
A bit more news, mainly because I have more photos from the weekend. The adult male bird turned up yesterday after the rain and sat on the perch for about an hour. He was alert (ie hungry) but also sat for much of the time with his tail feathers spread out like this. I have seen it briefly occasionally with previous birds but not like this. I am not sure if he was drying his tail or was showing off.
After watching the corralled small birds for a long time he eventually launched an attack.
If a strike is unsuccessful he will often return to the perch within seconds so I wasn't surprised when a sparrowhawk landed 30 seconds later. But I was astonished to see it was the juvenile!
He must have been watching from up in my neighbour's ash tree, from where there is a good view across the garden, and decided to move in as soon as the perch was vacant. This is the closest I have been to seeing two birds together. It does suggest the older bird is dominant, or perhaps he just got here first. It occurs to me also that the older bird might have been aware that the youngster was watching and that his tail spread might have been a display of dominance.
