I nipped down to collect my Bushnell this morning and was dismayed to see it was displaying ‘File Error’ when I tried to see if it had captured any footage to show me what was using the gate track. I took it home anyway, to see if anything was on the card. There were only 4 clips. Three had nothing on them and one had the following footage:
Instead of putting it back in the same spot, I decided to try to find somewhere else with an increased chance of me capturing something a bit different. The local farmer (who put an owl box up) has a small copse of woodland on his land. I nipped down to his house this afternoon and asked if I could set the Bushnell up there for a few nights. He was more than happy to allow me to do so and told me that deer and badger are in there!
It is a ten minute walk from the lane and quite secluded…
It is a small conifer copse, but we did not have to wander far through it to start to see evidence of life. We found quite a lot of evidence of deer! There were several piles of droppings (known as fewmets) and, by the size of them, I would imagine it is either fallow or roe deer in this wood. There is a lot of farmland surrounding the wood, so I would expect either species to live here. My gut reaction is that it is roe deer.
There were also several flattened areas, that suggested that deer had lain there..
We also found the remains of a buzzard…. completely rotten away, leaving only feathers and bones. I managed to salvage the skull and will photograph that another time, as the light was too poor by the time we came back. Maybe this bird perished in the last bad snow we had.
Next to this corpse, was a fallen tree. On here, were the remains of another bird that had been eaten. I wondered if a sparrowhawk might have bought its prey to a spot such as this?? There were also cones shredded by squirrels.
I then found the perfect place to set up the Bushnell. I spotted several well worn paths into the woodland. We followed these to the edge of the wood.
These paths seem to come from a dip, which then led into more open farmland. The slope up into the wood seemed a perfect spot for the Bushnell so I mounted it on a tree, facing down this slope. Hopefully it will capture the visitors coming and going from the woodland. I am very excited about this one!
You can just see the Bushnell mounted on the tree in the above photo.
I expect I will not be able to collect the Bushnell until Wednesday…. the suspense is going to kill me! This is a brill site and there is loads of scope here. There were a couple of really interesting looking dens too…. one under an old shed. I think I am going to be frequenting this site quite a lot over the coming months!