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.

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.

Prickly Visitor

Had a very pleasant surprise to see a hedgehog had visited the back garden recently:



There was a time, some years ago, I would have two or three visiting every night throughout the Summer. I hope this one becomes a regular. To give it a bit of encouragement I have moved the old hedgehog house near to where it was seen so I could put some food inside, safe from cats, pigeons and Penny:



I also crushed some of the birds' peanuts to place in the hedgehog house.



Remember, don't use peanuts sold for human consumption as they may be salty which could kill a hedgehog.

This is the trail camera which has captured the video clips of fox and hedgehog night visitations:



The shelf above the camera is to give a bit of extra protection when we have heavy rainfall. The camera body is weather proof but a bit of extra protection against the elements never goes amiss.

Foxy

Getting to be a regular:



I had the trail camera set to take three stills and video. It would appear the video starts after the photos have been taken so any visiting wildlife tends to be well away from the camera in any video shots. Now I have it set to take only video so maybe next time Foxy visits we may actually see it move.

Bright Eyed and Bushy Tailed

When I read a short while ago that Ragged Robin had installed a trail camera it reminded me to put a new set of batteries in mine and fix it up again. Going through the few captures it made this week I see that we had a night visitor a couple of times.



Most of the captures are of Penny watering the garden or local cats so it was great to see some real wild life visit. Unfortunately the camera was only set to take still photos. I have now altered the settings so it will take short video clips as well as stills.

Fleeting Visit

Night Visitor

Checking for any captures on the trail camera I see a fox made another visit to the back garden





I hope next door's chickens are well secured at night.

The Wannabe Tiger

Having finally got round to mowing all the long grass at the bottom of the garden I thought it a good idea to fix the trail camera on a low post looking at that area.



The trail camera. IR night lighting at the top. Three passive infra red sensors at the bottom. (one pointing forwards and the others angled at 45 degrees). Camera in the middle.

Left it for a couple of days and discovered, though it worked, it worked too well.
The only stranger captured was this wannabe tiger strolling through:







Camera set up to take three shots in fairly quick succession every time it is triggered.

Of course you can guess who always features at some time or other:



But, there was a big problem. The branches, top left and right, waft about in the slightest breeze and keep triggering the camera during sunny daylight hours. That resulted in hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of photos with not a life form in sight and a lot of extra drain on the batteries. There is a lower setting for sensitivity but that risks missing anything of interest. For the moment it has been moved back to its original position.

I did consider a few other solutions.
1) set limits on the times it is operational.
2) use a higher pole and point the camera down more.
3) cut down the tree branches in its view.

With the first I would miss any daytime visitors.
The second wouldn't give me the profile view of visitors that I want.
I've done enough tree pruning for now. I want to keep some greenery.

Recently I made a start clearing the overgrown fruit cage.
There are more weeds and grass than anything else.
Then I can get rid of the blackcurrant bushes (not allowed to eat those any more).
Maybe plant more raspberry canes.
I stick to working outdoors before 9.30 a.m. to avoid the heat.

Night Visitor

Every so often I put out the Floureon trail camera to see what night life there may be about.

 

Until the latest session there was little of note to be seen. This time, on just one night over the couple of weeks it was operating, it captured something different. I know there are foxes about and felt sure they must visit my garden occasionally. Here at last is the proof.





and half an hour later







Since then I have cut down much of the long grass.
Pure coincidence I did that on the same day the fox visited.






I don't put the camera out very often as it uses eight AA batteries.
Batteries work in two banks of four.
I must rig up a permanent 6V supply for it.
Then I can set it to take short video clips as well as stills.
Also I will fix it lower down to have a better view of smaller creatures.
This old camera has only 5M pixels and responds in 1 second.
I see many of the latest ones have a 12 - 16M pixel camera and a response time of less than 0.5 second. Tempting - if I get more night visitors.

Badger in the Garden?

The Floureon trail camera has been set up and running at the back end of the garden for ten days. 411 photos taken, many empty of any visible life, some of the four legged boss:

   

... quite a few of Wood Pigeons and occasionally Blackbirds:



Patiently reviewing all 400+ I spotted just 6 which had something different.
Far from clear but it looks to me as though a Badger has visited:
(At the top of the photo)





I never in my wildest dreams expected to see a badger in my garden
Time to start putting out some piles of peanuts at night to entice it closer to the camera?

Floureon Trail Camera

Some years ago I purchased a wildlife trail camera. That was at a time when I used to have regular evening visits from bats. I was fairly sure they used to skim the pond to drink and hoped a trail camera would capture any action. It was a complete failure. What little it did capture was of poor quality so I ended up adding it to my pile of unused equipment.

I still like the idea of being able to capture photos of any night time visitors to the garden. I know there are foxes around from time to time and keep hoping hedgehogs will start visiting again. Anyway, I suddenly decided to try a more modern one and ordered a Floureon Trail camera from a seller on eBay. That arrived yesterday so after perusing the instructions - yes I do sometimes read them - I set it up temporarily on the side of the shed aimed at the wilder end of the garden:



The camera runs on 6V so can have 4 or 8 1.5V batteries depending how long it is going to be left running. Four are said to last for up to three months so it is quite economical to use. Unlike my old trail camera this one has a built in colour display so a quick check can be made on what it has captured on the SD card which is an extra purchase. The display is automatically turned off when the camera is switched to automatic operation.

This camera has three passive IR sensors. The two angled ones detect an approaching creature and prime the camera ready to take a photo when the forward facing detector notices any action. It can be set to take a single shot or 2 or 3 in succession. It takes colour during daylight (the background picture on the collage), b/w with IR LEDs at night. If wanted it will record the temperature along with the date and time on the photo.

It can also take movie clips and time lapse so I will have to experiment to see how those work out. Results are not up to my DSLR standards as the camera has a 5 mega pixel sensor which can be interpolated to 8 or 12 Mpix when saved. Still they seem reasonable as record shots of any nocturnal activity and pretty good value for £56. Probably less than half what I paid for my first one.

No problems getting the photos on to a computer. When the provided USB cable is plugged in it installs itself as a removable device on PC or Mac.