Wildlife, living next to nature

[xoxoxoBruce]

If they won't move smack 'em with a broom...

[Gravdigr]

Reckon bear damage is covered by your average car insurance policy?

[Carruthers]

The night before last at 2340 my iPad pinged a warning that the ISS was about to appear.
I was wide awake so I thought I'd make the effort.
However, when I looked out of the back window I saw a pair of Badgers and three cubs on the lawn which I watched for ten or twelve minutes so the space station had to take a back seat.
Annoyingly, Sod's Law struck and for the first time in ages I'd placed the camera in a different spot which meant that it didn't capture them all in one frame.
I'm pleased to say that in the early hours of this morning mum + three turned up.
They triggered the camera on several occasions but the youngsters move quickly and images are often blurred.
This one isn't perfect but it's not bad.



I've been leaving out food for these creatures every night for three years but it's the first year I've ever seen cubs either in the flesh or on camera.

[Diaphone Jim]

I saw a scene just like this on the road home this afternoon.
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos...27?s=2048x2048
I thought the adult had gotten tangled in string or brush, but the chicks were just scurrying around her feet.
All I have is a crummy flip phone for a camera. Gone are the days when I would have chased after them for a 35mm film pic of my own.

[Diaphone Jim]

As for Carruthers' neat badger pics, Wiki has this:
"They consume them [rabbits] by turning them inside out and eating the meat, leaving the inverted skin uneaten.[64] Hedgehogs are eaten in a similar manner.[63] In areas where badgers are common, hedgehogs are scarce."

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim

As for Carruthers' neat badger pics, Wiki has this:
"They consume them [rabbits] by turning them inside out and eating the meat, leaving the inverted skin uneaten.[64] Hedgehogs are eaten in a similar manner.[63] In areas where badgers are common, hedgehogs are scarce."

I feel that it is important to put the above in context...

European badgers are among the least carnivorous members of the Carnivora;[60] they are highly adaptable and opportunistic omnivores, whose diet encompasses a wide range of animals and plants.
Earthworms are their most important food source, followed by large insects, carrion, cereals, fruit and small mammals including rabbits, mice, shrews, moles and hedgehogs.
Insect prey includes chafers, dung and ground beetles, caterpillars, leatherjackets, and the nests of wasps and bumblebees.
They are able to destroy wasp nests, consuming the occupants, combs, and envelope, such as that of Vespula rufa nests, since thick skin and body hair protect the badgers from stings.[61]
Cereal food includes wheat, oats, maize and occasionally barley. Fruits include windfall apples, pears, plums, blackberries, bilberries, raspberries, strawberries, acorns, beechmast, pignuts and wild arum corms.

Coincidentally, the wholesale ripping up of local lawns in the autumn by Badgers searching for leatherjackets has ceased in recent years since I started leaving peanuts out for them.

As for the part that cereals play in their diet, a few years ago over twenty Badgers were observed, by the local farm manager, feeding on spilled wheat one evening during harvest.

Link

[Carruthers]

I don't know how many fox families we have hereabouts, but my neighbour saw a vixen and two well grown cubs sunning themselves on her back lawn a few days ago.

We've had cubs of various sizes (different families?) visiting for the last three or four weeks and last night my camera caught the attention of this little chap.

[Diaphone Jim]

I sometimes wonder about the effects of the flash on the critters, wild and domestic, caught on my trail cam.
This kit was quite close and probably had dilated eyes at the time the camera triggered.
Any worries in the discussions of the hobby?

[Griff]

Switch to Infra-Red?

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim

I sometimes wonder about the effects of the flash on the critters, wild and domestic, caught on my trail cam.
This kit was quite close and probably had dilated eyes at the time the camera triggered.
Any worries in the discussions of the hobby?

I must confess to being a little puzzled.
Are you saying that your trail cam has a conventional flash?

My cam will work during the day but it doesn't have a flash facility.
At night it works in infra red mode so the fox cub above wasn't illuminated by a flash.

The above arrangement seems to be the standard system on trail cams but I will willingly stand corrected.

[Diaphone Jim]

Boy howdy, does my cam have a flash. That is why I am concerned.
It lights up the whole yard and will illuminate objects 100 feet or more away, even more for reflective things.
Sometimes it will get me good when I am not paying attention.

[Gravdigr]

[Diaphone Jim]

You got me on that one.
I watched the guy in the bear suit put up with the profane family four times hoping something different would happen.

[monster]

This morning's 8am socially-distanced 5K with a few friends had to take a little detour around wannabe-mama-turtle

[monster]

... one of said friends is a volunteer turtle-counter and called it in (this is the middle of the busiest trail in the busiest park on the busiest day of the year.....) ...Herpologist visited and reported turtle struggling, no eggs yet, seemed stuck in place daunted by all the traffic, sluggish and has an old crack in the shell, may not be in the best of health. They moved it to the side under the bushes in the hope that it would either give up and relocate to a safer place or try again at dawn before the traffic returns.