Muntjac Deer in the Garden

Imagine my surprise when checking through the trail camera captures and seeing some clips of a Muntjac deer ambling round the garden. Looks as though it spent a good half hour there. Then it was followed shortly after by a visiting fox. Misty video as the lens fogs when the temperature approaches 0C.



One thing is for sure - a fenced garden is no barrier to curious and determined wildlife.

Fox Daytime Visit

I was quite surprised to see the trail camera had caught a daylight visiting fox.



It can obviously smell the food I put in the Hedgehog house. The vido clip was very short so I slowed it down to half speed.

Jackdaw

Don't often see a Jackdaw in the garden. This one was recorded having a drink.



I was relieved to see that a trail camera had recorded a couple of visits by a hedgehog recently. Also there were a couple of visits by a fox.

Spotted in the Churchyard

As we walked through the back of the village churchyard something caught my attention:



Someone had placed a very neatly painted peddle in the shape of a ladybird on one of the gravestones.



Lovely to see. It is quite a while since I saw a painted pebble in the village. A sign that things are getting back to 'old normal'.

AWOL

Worried and disappointed that there have been no sightings of a Hedgehog in the garden for five nights now. We will have to make do with this:



Penny's latest soft toy.

The fox visited a couple of nights ago. First appearance for about two weeks. Trust it to pick a night where the video was almost washed out due to there being a heavy mist at the time. It seems to have been one of those weeks for achieving next to nothing on the wildlife front. I spent some time trying to photograph and video a bee fly only to achieve unusable, fuzzy, out of focus results.

To quote an old political sound bite - Things can only get better.

Caught on Camera

The past couple of days haven't been shorts and T-shirt weather but at least the grass was dry enough in the afternoons to give it the once over with the mower. Hedgehog activity in the garden has tailed right off. The night before last saw one brief visit and last night none was detected by the trail or feeding cameras. I wonder whether it is a mama hog about to give birth. As for the fox. That hasn't been detected for quite a while. I am gradually building up a collection of video clips of the different birds which come to the old waterfall for a drink. Not enough yet to make a video.

Caught on camera?



Just a Wood Pigeon in full flight.

P.S. From what I have just read hoglets are not due untl June or July so it's too early in the year for that.

Determined Rook

A small group of Rooks have become regular morning visitors to my bird feeders.









They usually end up unhooking the coconut feeders but I've not managed to video that as yet.

Time for a Drink

After sampling the free meal in the Hedgehog House this hog has a drink from the part frozen pools in the old garden pond waterfall:



Near then end of the second clip the hedgehog's foot breaks through the thin layer of ice.

The title screen shows a beautifully illustrated bone china mug I bought on line from CJ Wildlife.

Hedgehog Feast

Finally managed to record some video of the hedgehog feeding inside the hedgehog house:



The light spilling out of the hedgehog house is IR which looks bright when seen by the trail camera. I tried my first camera attempt with the 12V supply from a battery. The video was still suffering interference so I obtained a tp-link tapo TC-60 wifi video camera to try. Bingo!



All went well, slightly out of focus as the hedgehog house was too small to move the camera well away but still a fair result. The camera has a microSD card to save the videos. It can be programmed to record only when motion is detected. The video clips can be downloaded by wifi to the makers app on a smart phone ot tablet. This is an indoor camera so should be OK in the hedgehog house but is not waterproof for exterior use. The 9V supply is in a nearby shed.

The feast .....



..... is a mixture of bought hedgehog food and dried mealworms. Water is available elsewhere in the garden.

While Humans Sleep

Some more video clips from the trail cameras with a cameo appearance from the four legged boss.



I set up a camera inside the hedgehog house to video one feeding. It worked - but - suddenly the interference, video distortion, I was having last Summer has started again. It seems to be a 100Hz constant signal of some sort. Very puzzling. It is affecting three out of five cameras which are powered from 12V power supply wall warts. I will try running the 'feeding' camera from a 12V battery to see whether that clears things up. If it does then there is a fair chance the problem is transmitted through the mains supply. Strange that it hasn't shown up at all throughout the Winter.

Bird Visitors

A while ago I put the waterfall from the old pond to one side as the wooden frame which was holding it up was rotting. Even laid almost flat the pools in the waterfall filled with rain water which attracted birds to bathe and drink. I set up my old trail camera nearby to see what it could capture. It is timed to be working mainly at night with a bit of early and late daylight as the days get longer. A few results so far:

Hedgehog Visit This Morning

Recent night time wildlife video clips have been taken using a ToGuard H100 trail camera. I am slowly finding the best settings to achieve the results I want. I think this morning's capture is about right. One of three hedgehog visits in the early hours this morning to their feeding station in the hedgehog house:



Previously I found that full IR lighting from the camera resulted in over exposed close subjects. I now have it on the economy setting. I also increased the maximum length of each clip to 30 seconds. The video quality can be set as high as 4K but I have found 1296 P30 seems good enough to keep some detail when I zoom in, as I did with this one using Wondershare Filmora X video editing software.

Lucky I remembered to check how much food was left in the dish. Previously it had been going down slowly. This morning there were just a few scraps left. Maybe there is more than one visiting to feed. It is also a good recommendation for the Hedgehog food I bought from CJ Wildlife.

Two Hedgehogs Visit

A hedgehog visits and enters the hedgehog house where there is a dish of food. (I have added some bought hedgehog food to mix with the crushed peanuts I mentioned in a previous post.) Soon after that another arrives. What appears to be a fight between them is the male trying to persuade the female he is ready to mate. There are short gaps in the filming as the trail camera pauses for a while after each fifteen seconds of video capture.



The camera keep reporting a low battery voltage even though it is connected to a mains six volt power supply. I think the long connecting cable from the PSU is causing the voltage to drop when the IR LEDs switch on so they are automatically switched off again. Something to sort out here.

P.S. Moved things around so an extension cable is no longer needed. Once that was done the reported power went from 75% to the full 100%. The cable I had bought is too thin, with too much resistance causing a voltage drop when a lot of extra power was needed to light the IR LEDs.