Since, I was in Ireland last week, I had two weeks of footage from some 25 cameras to catch up with this week! Yew View is always full of wildlife and, whatever time of the year it is, I am constantly thrilled and excited by the wildlife we film on site. I could have so easily done my #30DaysWild just at this single site, as it is just the constraints of time that prevent me from filming and photographing more at this incredible garden!
The footage I always look at first is that at the otter holt. I had checked the cams on my phone, so knew the dog otter had been around. The footage showed that he has been staying overnight every two to three night. He tends to arrive around 6-7am and then leaves between 9-10pm. I lifted a couple of the best clips that really showcase this beautiful male… he really is in his prime!
In this clip, he appears to be limping, but when he re-emerged the following morning, he was fine!
My Bushnell also picked him up… this is certainly the closest I have had an otter to my trail cam!
I have also captured some night clips of what appears to be the female and one of the cubs visiting, sniffing around and then leaving..
I am delighted with the footage we are capturing from this holt and I hope the female chooses this site to have her next set of cubs.
The badgers are very busy at the sett, and we have three new cubs on the scene. They are quite big now and, as happened last year, the sow brought them to the artificial sett once they were quite big. They have not visited the camera sett yet, but are now out and about before the light fades so we are getting some super clips of them in daylight. The youngsters appear shorter in the body and are much paler grey. The adults’ coats appear more grey-brown.
These new cubs are quite inquisitive!…
It isn’t just badgers we get here. This fox regularly has a sniff around..
and, amazingly, the leucistic pheasant is still around!
The Kingfishers are still visiting regular but it was two different species on the post that caught my eye this week. Firstly, this wonderful woodpecker duo that visited briefly. The right hand bird is a female Great-spotted Woodpecker and the left hand bird is a juvenile, distinctive with its red cap. They are being seen on the feeders a lot at the moment too.
At this time of year, the wildlife pond is full of damselflies and dragonflies. This attracts a number of pied wagtails who hunt along the fringes, performing acrobatics in the reed fringes, catching these insects on the wing. This individual caught a Banded Demoiselle and kindly landed on the post with this rather challenging mouthful!
It also had a preen on the post, not concerned by the chainsaw in action!
It is lovely to see that we have number of swallow nests at Yew View. Some are in a wood shed and I have cameras on a couple on the stables. These chicks were being diligently fed by both parents every few minutes. The hot weather has meant there is an abundance of insects around. This nest is quite low and, whilst the parents were out, I took a couple of pictures of the chicks…
With another pair eyeing up a different cup, I placed another HD cam on this nest. The site is not easy as it is dark in the roof of the stable, so the image is not as good as it would be if there was more illumination. This cup fledged 5 swallows a week ago and they still roost here at night and try to convince the parents to feed them. The white around the beak shows these are youngsters. The adults are completely dark blue around the beak.
There was also another nest in a beam recess on the other wall. I did think it had a lot of straw in for a swallow but they have nested there before. It is a very dark corner and I photographed the chicks. Whilst in the garage, I realised that these were actually robin chicks as a robin popped into feed them just a few metres from me!
The whole site is heaving with wildlife at the moment and I have struggled to get through the footage today! I am not back on site for two weeks now, as I’m off to Shetland next week….. there will be a wonderful plethora of exciting moments to catch up on when I return… I may need a week to catch up!