2016's Garden Visitors

While I've been running round the country for work, my trail camera has been keeping an eye on our garden visitors.  First - a confession - the battery was low for January and most of February so I didn't get night-time shots for those months.



24 June - Badger family

How many visits in 2016?

Mammals recorded on the Bushnell Trail Camera in 2016

This year, the badgers were very much the stars of the show. They visited every month from February to October and the number of visits was approximately double that of 2015.  I was delighted to see a group of three appearing on camera together. They appeared twice:

• on 24 June, two of the badgers were smaller than the third
• on 23 July, they were all about the same size - the youngsters were clearly growing fast.

On 25 July, I found that they had dug up a wasps nest.  So they are providing a free pest control service as well as photos!

Fallow buck, 17 May 2016

Sadly, we saw much less of the Fallow Deer. Last year, I noted that the darker, older buck stopped visiting in August. It appears that the magnificent light-coloured buck was less inclind to visit without his companion. We had just a few visits in the middle of the year.  In this shot, he has recently shed his antlers.

Fox - 27 December 2016, 1:40 pm

The number of fox visits (190 between March and December) is significantly down since last year (284 over the same period). We had spikes in March and August.  We usually expect increased visits in August as this is when the youngsters are active.  This August was very dry and, for the first time, I put a dish of water out for our wild visitors.  

Fox and cat - 11 August 2016

The camera occasionally captured a fox and cat together. In this photo, they look a little suspicious of each other. In others they didn't appear worried.