Despite it being January, there is still plenty going on at YewView. With the cold weather and the wildlife pond freezing over regularly, our kingfishers have not been visiting very often. This doesn’t mean that the kingfisher post is sitting empty.
A buzzard chose this as a perch on a couple of occasions and, although the camera is not set up for a bird as big as this, the fact that it chose to clean its talons meant that we were able to see its face a few times! What a fantastic chance to see this predator up close!
I took a few screen shots… #gallery-17110-23 { margin: auto; } #gallery-17110-23 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-17110-23 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-17110-23 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
The tawny also paid a brief visit..
Our barn owl has continued to visit the feeding platform at the end of the grade, next to the river. After a very rainy period, David also saw it hunting late afternoon whilst it was still light. Barn owls have incredibly soft feathers and these are not waterproof. They find it very difficult to hunt in wet weather. It is often after periods of wet weather, that you see these owls out hunting early when it is still light. We have one barn owl box in this area, but we are planning a second one in the area, keeping our fingers crossed that they might take to one of them!
The badger sett has been used a lot by 2 individuals over the last few weeks. There has been a lot of play fighting and grooming, but they are yet to spend the day in there again.
The tawnies have been checking out our tawny box a lot since Christmas, but problems with a wireless point has meant that we have only had external views from a PTZ camera. After replacing this wireless point this week, I was able to put the new exterior camera up that I have been planning since last year. It was somewhat precarious, attempting to get this camera in place. With the ladder strapped to the tree and a safety harness on, friend Dave Harper managed the ladder from the base (a very important and vital role!), whilst I scaled the heights to fix the camera in place!
I am confident that this pair are going to nest in this box again this season… I really hope so! This camera should give us some excellent views of the owls in and out of the box. Early night footage looked promising…
I just need to tone the IR down a little and this should be a great camera.
Finally, it was good to see a few signs of Spring on site!
