I am a big trail cam addict! I absolutely love them and have them set here there and everywhere! For those who don't know, a trail camera is a small, battery operated camera, that is triggered by a sensor. The camera will take photos or a video whenever it detects an animal in front of the camera and saves the footage onto an SD card.
At Yew View there is a little corner plot of land, on the opposite side of a lane, to the large field where we have built the wildlife pond. The previous owners had an old polytunnel there and it was a bit of a mess. The area was cleared of the polytunnel and random junk and planted with a range of mixed trees and shrubs. It is surrounded by mature hedgerows and we called it 'The Grove'.
I noticed there was a very clear diagonal path through this area, so over the last month, I have set a trail camera and we've had some lovely clips....
The badgers use it a few times a week....
The foxes have also popped through; the same ones that are visiting the feeding station about half a mile away, in the main garden....
The most frequent visitors have been a number of different muntjac. The males have very distinctive antlers that help ID them. The female do not have antlers.
We have also filmed a female with a young kid. In contrast to all other species of deer in Britain, muntjac do not have a defined breeding season (rut). After a gestation period of seven months, they give birth to a single fawn and are ready to mate again within a few days.When newborn, muntjac kids have white spots, which they gradually lose.
Generally coming out after dark here, I did capture a few clips before it got dark.....
Trail cameras are a great way of finding out what is coming and going in an area such as this and we may well look at installing a wried camera here at some point.