End of year favourites - Birds on trail camera

Birds show up every day on my trail cameras.  I don't usually keep the videos of moorhens, ducks, geese, robins, pigeons, etc that I see every day but some of the recordings offer us a privileged view of behaviour that we wouldn't otherwise see.  Here are a few favourites from this year.

I am used to seeing sparrowhawks at home but this one appeared on my otter camera.  It's a first year bird, probably a female from its size, and whatever it was chasing it missed on this occasion.  I thought at the time that the call in the background was a buzzard but now I think it might be another sparrowhawk.

Water rails are much more often heard than seen.  They have a strange un-bird-like call, as this one is showing in front of the camera.

Water rails mostly eat invertebrates but will take larger prey, here a fish and a newt.

Carrion crows are pretty clever but this one was outsmarted by a mouse.  The story is a bit long to repeat in this post but you can find it here.

I posted a video of a heron eating water shrews a couple of days ago.  Another one (or perhaps the same one) tried to eat a frog, but lost it, and caught a toad but soon let it go.

Cetti's warblers were first recorded breeding in the UK only 50 years ago and they are now resident and breeding birds up here.  Like water rails they are mainly heard rather than seen but this one did turn up on the camera.  Unfortunately it wasn't singing.

Cetti's warblers sing all day and all night in the summer.  One was singing while a common snipe was exploring the bridge.  There is a little grebe and a bumblebee in the background at one point as well.

Finally a video I haven't posted before but something that turned up on PolecatCam in Allendale. A tawny owl catching a black spider in complete darkness.  Amazing.

There are birds every day on the cameras that don't make it to the blog.  I hope this has given a taste of what goes on while no-one is looking.

Bad news on WaterShrewCam

Bad news if you are a water shrew that is, but maybe good news if you are a heron.  The trail camera saw two shrews being eaten by a heron last year and another a few weeks ago in a blog I wrote for the Natural History Society of Northumbria.  Then last week the heron(s) caught and ate nine water shrews in six days at only one camera position.  I thought water shrews were uncommon but there must be a healthy population to sustain that level of predation.  Or at least there was.

And a bonus heron video.  Last month I posted a video of a heron that caught a frog that put up a good struggle and eventually got away, probably not unscathed.  This time the heron caught a toad.  The toad's defence is to swell up and produce a foul-tasting and perhaps toxic secretion from its back.  The heron seemed to realise pretty quickly and dropped the toad before trying to wash the taste away.

After that I think the heron will stick to water shrews, while there are any left. 

A very narrow escape

I am not an expert in swallowing live frogs but I think the trick is to get it turned round so it will go down head first.  This young heron made a rather inelegant flop into the reeds to catch a large frog but then didn't seem to know how to deal with it.  The poor frog got rather mauled about as the heron was trying to work out how to deal with it but eventually took its chance to leap to freedom.  The heron spent another minute gazing at the gap in the boards just in front of the camera to no avail.  Despite its escape I fear the frog probably didn't get away unscathed.

Another example of the fascinating non-target videos that turn up on OtterCam.  I expect we may see otters with frogs soon as March and April seem to be the season for them.  Otters are also rather more effective in dealing with frogs.

End of year favourites - Heron

The trail cameras get a lot of "non-target" captures, mostly birds.  At this time of year it is mainly robins, blackbirds and moorhens but earlier in the year there were plenty of ducks, geese and swans.  They rarely do anything interesting so I don't save the videos but every now and then something interesting turns up.  Herons do appear on the camera occasionally, but usually much too close and out of focus.  This time two cameras were watching to see a heron catch a water shrew.

Notice a second shrew running along the bank and then making a quick exit when it sees the heron.

There was a second video a few days later which I am surprised to find I haven't posted before. Somehow the heron knew there was a water shrew behind the tree and caught it.  It still had to bring the shrew down to the water to dunk it and make it easier to swallow.

The ending of the shrew

I have a new waterside trail camera position, taking advantage of a newly fallen branch, the only drawback being that I now need waders to reach the camera.  Having cameras watching the water's edge occasionally throws up a real surprise, as with this one.  I haven't had good video of a heron before, mainly because they are so close to the cameras that they don't fit in the frame.

There has been a lot of water shrew activity here in the past few weeks and a heron caught one last week.  This time the new camera position gave a much better view.  Notice a second shrew on the bank to the right which sensibly beat a hasty retreat when it saw what had happened.