JOURNAL

Trail cameras have played a huge role in monitoring wildlife. The ability to leave a camera hidden in the environment has left many a conservationist excited as to what they might see. I too have used trail cameras countless times and it’s like waiting for Christmas morning to find out what walked through the trail. Largely used to monitor wildlife trails or resources such as a watering hole, I have used them up in the canopy. After years of using trail cameras to watch badgers undisturbed at their setts to keeping up with the family fortunes of the local fox family I have branched out. Owls have always fascinated me from a young age. I think that it has been the fact that more often than not you hear them and rarely see them, and when you do it the feeling is incredible. One of the more common species is

It was my birthday recently so I decided to treat myself to a new purpose built camera trap housing. Now you will have seen that I have built my own camera trap housings before but will plans for trips overseas I wanted something that would be assembled in parts, mostly so it would fit in my suitcases ! Many of you will have seen the rise in Camtraptions and are at the forefront of camera trapping technology that is readily available for anyone that wants to have a go at camera trapping. When the housing arrived it was a solid green colour and I had seen on some online forums how people have painted their housing to become camouflaged in the environment. At first I thought about testing the design on my DIY housing but couldn’t resist getting started on the new housing before it went out for its first

Each year I mean to install a feeding station for the local bird populations. This year I have finally gotten around to setting one up. With a myriad of birdlife getting ready for the winter it’s a brilliant time of year to set up feeders and also water sources for wildlife. Having gotten a great deal on some bird feeders me and my partner got to work. Note to self I should have built the reflection pool on site, not prebuilt as it was a bit of a workout carrying it to the final location. Using the materials already available on site we both got to work setting the feeders and reflection pool up. With many sightings of Great Spotted woodpeckers I installed an upright perch for them to land on when they come in to feed on the peanut feeders. I will be heading back this week to drill

For most of my wildlife monitoring when scouting sites to photograph wildlife I have always opted for trail cameras as my ‘eyes in the wild’. But as new technology starts to take over the scene I will write about a new technology that may one day replace trail cameras for long term wildlife monitoring. The camera system in question is the Reolink Go camera system from Reolink camera systems. Specialising in CCTV and the surveillance work these cameras could change the way we watch wildlife. There are many incredible factors that make this a brilliant camera system to monitor wildlife. When I first opened the package I was struck by how small the camera was, a little smaller than a trail camera. The egg-like shape also means that as well as mounting the camera on the ready made mount you could potentially place the camera anywhere that it can fit.

After having placed the nest boxes I got to work to build one more very large nest box for Tawny owls. This Nestboxes is not the traditional design for Tawny owls but having seen the success of those using a wider box design instead of the long tube shaped boxes I set to work. Again I took home some large pieces of plywood from work and by this time I had managed to get together enough wood for the larger build. This box would comprise of a large nesting area, a short tunnel-like entrance hole with a platform balcony for the young owlets to explore once they fledge. For future builds I will build a slightly shallower nest box so that the young owls will be able to stand up and see the outside world, this means they are less likely to fledge prematurely because of their curiosity of the

Having been a huge fan of shows such as Springwatch and seeing the nests be monitored by cameras, I have always wanted to monitor my own. This time though I wanted to build nest boxes for something slightly bigger than the bluets in the garden. My job at the time meant that there was plenty of scrap wood to be had and also meant a lot of lugging timber on the bus ride home after work. My colleges did have some strange looks on their faces as they saw me take home all manner of scraps. But to me I knew what they could be so it made the late bus journeys home with armfuls of wood all the worth while ! The main aim was to build nesting boxes for some local farmland. From my bedroom window as well as some sightings out in the field I had heard

With plenty of time during lockdown I gave the ‘nature pond’ a bit of a tidy up. The pond was originally built by my dad about fourteen years ago and it has stood the test of time. With the liner leaking and becoming cracked after years of use it was time for a revamp. Originally it had a pump fed stream but I have guessed that that is where the water had been escaping from. This wasn’t ideal at the best of times and with the water being constantly pumped out the pond kept on emptying. As you can see the pond looked very good for wildlife back when it was first built.  My plan was to use some of the ferns that were around the garden to plant up the edges and breaking up the border. With the garden having had quite the change over the past two years

So with continued sunshine and glorious warm weather me and Dad headed over to Warnham Nature Reserve. It had been many years since we last were over at the reserve and wanted to see how it and the wildlife were doing. Pulling up to the car park we saw a large new building on the water front. Walking over we saw that they had started work on a large water front bird hide, it looked similar to the main observatory hide at WWT Barnes in London. The widlife didn’t seem to mind in the slightest with terns soaring through the summer breeze and marsh frogs belting out a chorus of croaky tunes. As we scanned the main lake we could clearly see at least a pair of Common terns circling the lake in search of prey and divebombing the surface in the hope of locking on to an unsuspecting fish.

With plenty of time during lockdown I gave the ‘nature pond’ a bit of a tidy up. The pond was originally built by my dad about fourteen years ago and it has stood the test of time. With the liner leaking and becoming cracked after years of use it was time for a revamp. Originally it had a pump fed stream but I have guessed that that is where the water had been escaping from. This wasn’t ideal at the best of times and with the water being constantly pumped out the pond kept on emptying. As you can see the pond looked very good for wildlife back when it was first built. My plan was to use some of the ferns that were around the garden to plant up the edges and breaking up the border. With the garden having had quite the change over the past two years

So in the last blog post you saw how I, or rather my Dad, built a nest box for a Little owl. Now the box has been sitting around in the garden shed for a few weeks so with a break in the weather I headed out to install it on some local farmland with the help of my trusty assistant, my girlfriend ! Originally the box was a plain beige so I decided to give it a paint job. The dark brown colour would help it blend in with the tree trunk and not make it too to unwelcome inhabitants such as Grey squirrels. As well as painting the box I also screwed some thick tree bark to the front to make it look a bit more natural and to make the entrance hole feel more like a hollowed out tunnel on a tree.  After ‘doing up’ the nest

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