FoxCam in colour

I don't use my old Wingscapes BirdCam 2.0 very often these days as it is a bit unreliable and often disappointing. Over the years I have had four but only one still works.  Its advantages are that it has adjustable preset focus and takes proper flash photos, giving colour night time still photos.  The problem with the one that still works is that the sensitivity is too high on "high" and too low on "medium", meaning that it can miss a lot of photos.  Every now and then, though, it can have a good night.  I have been targeting badgers recently (more to follow) but also picked up a couple of decent fox photos which I thought you might like to see.  These two were taken on different nights but are probably the same animal (it has the same mark on its nose).  Unlike the badgers the fox doesn't hang around for a second photo.

Sparrowhawk news

After almost a week of the lockdown here is a report from the garden.  Since my last post a few weeks ago I have seen much more of the adult sparrowhawk than the juvenile.  Over the past couple of weeks he has mainly been here in the afternoon.  I suspect this is because he is catching extra food for his mate to get her into top breeding condition, rather than because he can't get enough to eat.  (The female has to get to a weight over 320g, twice the male's weight, otherwise she won't be fit enough to lay eggs.)  

On one afternoon he made and ate two kills within 30 minutes and then was so full he just sat under the gooseberries for an hour, almost as if he was too heavy to fly off.

The next morning he had a blue tit for breakfast.

An hour later he was eating a robin.  He likes to stand on the edge of the raised bed as he can get a better grip on his prey.

A couple of days ago he caught me by surprise and I twice spooked him, not realising he was in the garden.  Yet twenty minutes later he was eating what I think was a great tit.  He is fastidious in cleaning his talons and his beak when he has finished.

In this photo he was sitting only about 1m from the window.  It is a poor photo taken in deep shade but I like it because you can see the reflection of the window in his eye, even if you can't quite see me.

I have been recording a few videos with the window open, so there is an audio track.  There is a lot of background noise from the traffic but you can also hear the alarms from the small birds in the gooseberry bushes.  Don't worry, there are no videos of him feeding.  In this one he is on high alert and is hungry.

In this clip he is happy to sit and preen after eating.

This video shows how the camera copes with changing light.  To start with the perch was in shade with a brightly lit background.  Then the sun went behind a cloud (or, more accurately, a cloud passed in front of the sun) and the camera automatically adjusted the exposure so the sparrowhawk appears brighter.  Then the sun reappeared and the settings were reversed.

Here he launches three attacks.  You can see how quickly his attention switches from preening to hunting.  He didn't return to the perch immediately after any of these attacks but I didn't see whether they were successful.

Sometimes he gets a bit bored with the kitchen garden and flies over the hedge to try his luck on the feeders outside the kitchen window.

Here is a short video close-up recorded in landscape format.

The portraits work best in portrait format so here are a few from recent days.

In previous years the sparrowhawks have stopped visiting the garden around the beginning of April so he may not be around for much longer.  If he does go I shall miss having him here but at least I shall be able to get on with some work in the kitchen garden.

An unexpected encounter

I have adapted my trail cameras to be able to focus on closer subjects but not really this close.  This time the camera was in the reeds hoping to find an otter but found a very suspicious badger instead.  Badgers regularly patrol the edge of the lake and will happily eat frogs at this time of year.

WaterShrewCam

I am going to post a bit more frequently for a while, partly for the benefit of folks like my mum and friends who are in isolation and can't get out and about.  The restriction on activities will severely limit my excursions so most posts will probably be of happenings in the garden.  For the time being, however I have a few other things I can share.  This is a brief video I recently put on the Mammal Society Facebook page where it attracted more interest than my otter posts.  I suppose that is because water shrews are sighted more rarely than otters.  This one was dashing through the culvert where I film the dog otter.

OtterCam in March

The camera in the culvert picks up the dog otter two or three nights a week as he goes around on his patrol.  One time the camera was a bit crooked, either because it had slipped or because the otter had knocked it.  If he was not too close to the camera I can correct it on the photos (below) but not on the videos.

On one night the otter caught and ate two frogs within four minutes at about 2 o'clock in the morning.  He caught them in the stream just downstream of the culvert and brought them back in to eat.  Each frog disappeared in a few mouthfuls.

Having finished the first one it took him only 10 seconds to return with another.

Four bricks I had put by the sluice gate to support the cameras a while back were washed downstream into the culvert during a storm and became stuck half way down.  The otter likes to use them to eat on because dismembering a slippery wriggling frog inside a slippery pipe in the water flow in pitch dark is not easy.  Here is the first video (if you are of a nervous disposition perhaps you shouldn't watch).  This is all the time it takes him to catch and eat a frog and go looking for another one.

Moments later he was back with the second frog (a bit more gruesome).

A few nights later the camera picked up the otter with another frog.

I hope all that didn't put you off your dinner.

For the second month in a row I haven't found the female otter and her pups on the cameras.  All that means is that they didn't visit the bank in front of the camera in the nights it was there.  They could well be in another part of the lake or be elsewhere in mother's territory, perhaps with a view to the pups dispersing soon, as they are now about a year old.

The dog otter is a regular on the camera in the culvert.  Since these pictures were recorded the sluice gate has been raised to its highest level and the water flow in the culvert has stopped so I crawled up the pipe and removed the bricks.  The dog otter still travels through and can jump up the gate quite easily.  I'll keep an eye on what is going on with the cameras and post another report next month if I find anything of interest.

Feeding the crows

This has been going on for the last couple of years and I think by now the crows have got me well trained.  Each time I get home they are sitting on the roof waiting for me.  As soon as they see me they fly down to the lawn outside the kitchen window and peer up at the window trying to look hungry until I give in and throw them some peanuts.  There are often three, sometimes four, but two are dominant.  I think these must be the resident pair and the others are last year's young who are reluctant to move on (carrion crows don't breed until two years of age).

They all scoff as many peanuts as they can and then try to pick as many as they can before flying off with a beakful.

Although they are family there is no spirit of cooperation between them and it is each crow for itself.  They are tolerant of me to a certain extent (after all I provide the food) but remain quite wary and jumpy.  They were very suspicious when I put down a trail camera to get a closer view but I did manage to make this short montage.

In the absence of a trail camera one or two crows return almost immediately in case there is anything left.  This time a couple of magpies came in to clean up.  This is a good example of how the Poundland close focus lens brings the focus forwards on the trail camera, giving good focus from less than 1m up to about 2 or 3m.  Without the extra lens it focuses from 2 or 3m to infinity so anything closer is blurred.

MallardCam

Although my trail cameras are usually set up to target otters, badgers, foxes, etc, they do pick up all sorts of other things, mostly rats.  I have seen weasels, jays, shrews, mice, owls, etc and on this occasion a pair of mallards.  They were already in view by the time the camera switched on its infrared light and started recording.  They were spooked by the light and took off so quickly that it is difficult to see what happened.  I have put in a short slow motion replay to make it easier to see.  When they came back in daylight they were still wary but not so afraid of the camera.  It is interesting that many other animals don't react to the light at all.

Bird of the week - Northern bald ibis

Not quite what one would expect to see walking round the garden but this is what my friends Viv and David saw when they looked out of their window.

It is a northern bald ibis (Geronticus eremita), one of the world's rarest birds, if not one of the prettiest.  It is not on the British List and turns out to be an escapee from the nearby Kirkley Hall, from where three of 10 birds escaped after damage to their enclosure in Storm Dennis a couple of weeks ago.  One of the other birds (with a white ring) has been seen twice in a field about 2km away from this one.

Looking a bit like a cross between a glossy ibis and a vulture, this one was wandering round the garden probing for worms and grubs in the soil with its long curlew-like beak.

The only population of truly wild northern bald ibises is in Morocco where there are now about 700 birds. Extensive conservation efforts there have saved the bird from extinction in the wild and its status has recently been changed from critically endangered to endangered on the IUCN Red List.  Another small population of about 200 birds exists in Turkey.  They are captive-bred and are free-flying in the summer but caged in the winter to prevent migration.

Northern bald ibises in Austria were protected by decree in 1504 but despite this they became extinct in Europe about 400 years ago.  The European birds, also known as waldrapps, were described by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner in his Historia animalium in 1555.

In recent years there has been a reintroduction programme in northern Austria.  Birds there have been taught to migrate to southern Tuscany by following a microlight aircraft conveying their human foster mothers.  You can read more about the Waldrapp Project here and watch a short video here.

The northern bald ibis was once much more widespread.  It and the African sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus) were revered in ancient Egypt. This Egyptian hieroglyph depicts a northern bald ibis.

Many thanks to David and Viv for letting me see this fascinating bird.  Efforts are being made to recapture it and its fellow fugitives which may be unlikely to survive long in the wild.