*apologies to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” – it’s had enough of a mauling the past few years. Or about time too, really.
Another visit from a young hare today, anyway.
They seem to like popping up and eating the grass near our living room window, despite dozens of acres of the stuff all around. I like to think they’re coming to say hello, although that does seem a bit unlikely.
I just finished reading another book about hares – this time, it’s “The Private Life of the Hare” by John Lewis-Stempel. His assertion that Ireland is in the UK aside (which is clumsy at best), it’s a nice collection of history, lore and verse about the little furry fellows. I’m in total agreement with him about the magic of them.
The fence is complete. The gate is “fashioned” from the mini-pallet on which the wire and posts arrived.
Completed fencing
The stones I lined the perimeter with have been covered with soil as planned.
Apart from that, the other excitement today was our first sighting of a squirrel here. It was going spiralling up and down the larch tree, presumably after seeds that have long since been snaffled by the birds.
Obviously lockdown is taking its toll, and we have started naming the wildlife in lieu of having pets or any other human contact.
We’ve covered young Kenny Leveret before:
Kenny Leveret
There’s also a small bird that likes to flit in and out of a wood pile at the back of the house. Obviously we weren’t going to go Dam Busters on that one, so I present to you Sophia (the wren):
Sophia the wren
There’s a dog that likes to visit too, but he always has a big muzzle on his face (apparently due to messing with clothes on washing lines). To protect his privacy (does GDPR cover dogs?) I’m not posting a still from a security camera at the moment, but his name is Hannibal Dogter. I imagine he does eat liver, but not necessarily with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Finally (for now), we have Eric the bank vole. I don’t know why he’s called that, but it seems a reasonable name for him. He likes hanging around the turf stack. No photos yet.
Not, disappointingly, a band specialising in covers of songs by the Hull-based sophisti-pop duo fronted by Tracey Thorn, performed by someone looking like the frizzy-haired brock-loving guitarist from Queen, but an update on the wildlife captured from the device formerly known as badgercam.
badgercam in situ
So far, it has been visited by:
A magpie. I can sort-of see the point of this – an easy mistake for the bird to make. I could try to make the camera look more like a large mammal, I suppose, but don’t have the raw materials to hand.
A blackbird. Hmm. Not impressed.
An aggressively-inquisitive robin. Actually, the robins here all seem to be like that. It’s impossible to do anything outside without it being watched-over by one.
So, not a resounding success (except that the robin didn’t manage to destroy it, despite its best efforts):
I suspect that the badger was just passing through looking for somewhere with food and shelter… maybe it has given up now and is standing in the middle of the road, waiting for the eternal release of a speeding Ford Mondeo.
Last night a badger was caught on one of the security cameras bustling off into the undergrowth down the side of the driveway/track/ditch.
The weather has been brutal here for a number of weeks, punishing us with the full range of named storms. This has led to some of the wildlife being a bit more visible than normal – the other week I had to slow down while driving along as a couple of rabbits chose a really daft time to try to cross the road.
I’m hoping that the badger has taken up residence here, as at least it shows that we’re not the only things daft enough to spend a lot of time in this wilderness.
Anyway, last night’s footage was from a camera mounted on the electricity pylon (tall wooden pole with bits taken out of it by careless turf-cutters and their tractors), reasonably high up. The camera’s wireless, just to be clear – I’m not running a cable up the side of the thing of course.
The angle of view wasn’t great, but you can make out enough to know it’s a badger at least.
I decided to try to go one better today, so added another camera at ground level. To make the badger feel more comfortable with its extra surveillance, I designed a stunningly realistic badger-cam so it would blend in.
After careful consideration of the impact on the badger of any uncanny valley-based reaction, with heavy heart I had to tone down the realism just a notch to this:
I’m still not convinced it will be enough to prevent the badger running off into the sunset with the device, but I’m hoping for the best.
To sweeten the already massively alluring deal, I fecked a lot of vegetable peelings into the hedge around the area of last sighting. So with a bit of luck tomorrow will bring some better wildlife videos…
Update: day 2 of badgerwatch has resulted in absolutely nothing. The barcode-furred monster hasn’t made its way past the new camera at all, despite being showered with gifts (well, potato scraps)
