April 2023 Round Up

One of the resident Wildcats of Saint Priest-Palus, Limousin

April saw Su & I return to our home in Central France (Limousin) for the whole month, which was a real treat. The house, which sits at about 500M elevation in a very rural forested area, is one of the most wildlife rich environments I know, which is one of the reasons why we purchased it. Last year I recorded European Wildcat, Pine & Beech Martens, Badger, Red Fox, Roe Deer, Brown Hare and Barn Owls in the garden, so there is always plenty to photograph :-)

One of the downsides of not being there permanently (the house is mid-renovation) is every time we go back it’s very much like starting all over again, with the need to get the animals and birds once again used to their being food offered at the feeding stations, the scent and presence of our Dog around the garden, and of course the temporary hides and various camera systems I put up. I hadn’t been there since November last year, so there were plenty of changes to see both in terms of the renovation project, and the garden & field, with Spring starting to transform what was a damp & cold, leafless scrubland when I left, into a lush green and flower speckled environment, rich for photography.

One of the first things I did when we purchased the property was to put up a dozen mixed birdboxes, and create a permanent feeding station at the top of the field, which is made from some old dead wood branches, a couple of flat pieces of timber to put loose food on, and some hanging feeders. This stays in place all year round, and is great for attracting the common woodland and garden birds we get such as Marsh, Great and Blue Tits, Chaffinches, Robins, Blackbirds, Nuthatches, and occasionally Woodpeckers and Jays. In turn the spilt food that ends up around the feeding station attracts the Bank Voles, and at night time the Bar Owls sit atop the tallest uprights of the feeding station and prey on the unsuspecting Rodents below. When I am there I place a Wildlife Watching Supplies C30 Hide about 30ft away, and when I can grab an hour or 2 in there watching the wildlife that comes and goes.

The number of Nuthatches around our house seemed significantly up on previous years, and they soon found the stash of peanuts I had put on the feeding station at the top of the field.

One of the other things I did from day one was erect a number of trail cameras (the sort of kit that hunters use to monitor the comings and goings of wildlife) around the property so I could get a feel for what we have living there and passing through. I now have 9 cameras up, covering most parts of the garden, field and barns, and I have recorded a lot of wildlife, with many cameras providing several clips a night of the passing Foxes, and Hedgehogs, or on some occasions Badgers, Martens, and Wildcats that come on to our property. This trip I removed one camera which was in our old open fronted barn that we store wood in as it had got pretty old and was not reliably triggering and replaced it with a new Garde Pro E8 camera that I had picked up on Amazon on special for under £100. This little unit not only triggers and records 1296P video or 32MP stills day and night (in pitch black) but also can be used as a WiFi hotspot and can stream the video to your phone or table up to about 30ft away. Which means I will in due course be able to stream Barn Owls to the comfort of my planned office that is directly opposite the barn. To give you a flavour, here’s a short 30 second clip of the said camera in situ, streaming one of the Barn Owls.

I mentioned above that occasionally the Woodpeckers and Jays visit the feeding station at the top of the field, however they are both very wary despite the large numbers that live around the garden. As a result I decided to target them using my Camtraptions DSLR camera trap system, as this would allow photographs to be taken without anyone being present to potentially spook them away (you can read a little more about the Camtraptions system and how it works here). This sounds much more planned and coherent than what actually happened, which was I got bored after almost 3 weeks of the system failing to photograph Foxes at night (who were not coming close to the logs I had baited with peanut butter, jam and handfuls of loose peanuts) and I decided to switch targets to at least get some usable daytime images of the birds that I found were happy to land on the logs in the early morning and late evening and steal the bait I had put out for the night time visitors!

Great Spotted Woodpeckers are incredibly wary birds so using the Camtraptions DSLR camera trap seemed to be a great solution to them being too nervous to come to the feeder when I was in the hide. I set it up and within 12 hours I had half a dozen usable images :-)

There are plenty of occasions when things don’t go to plan. The Camtraptions DSLR camera trap was also set up for Foxes on the night this Tawny Owl decided to come and perch on the uppermost log I had set out. Not expecting an Owl to come visit, I hadn’t left any head room in the frame, and as a result all I got that night was some rather magnificent fluffy feet and the lower half of a Tawny Owl on the camera :-)

The Foxes were very camera shy, staying well away from the logs laced with jam and peanut butter, and crucially the sensor :-(

This little Wood Mouse took advantage of the Peanut Butter smeared log that I had set up in front of the DSLR camera Trap. Thanks to the super sensitivity of the PIR trigger I captured several images of this mouse climbing around the makeshift woodland scene. Alas they are really only good for web use, as they are a significant crop of the original file as I was set up with a wide angle lens to capture the whole body of the Fox.

Spring had well and truly arrived by the middle of April, and to me this was most evident by the return of the Barn Swallows whose numbers swelled over the course of the third week. As I mentioned above, the house is currently being renovated, and part of that has been the installation of a new fosse septique (septic tank) which happened in late February. As a result, outside the front of our property we currently have a large area of recently dug soil, which one hot afternoon I realised the Swallows were landing on to collect nesting material in the form of roots and dried grasses that had been churned up by the digger. As soon as my renovation chores for the day were done (scrubbing reclaimed stones to finish the lounge wall!) I grabbed my camera and pulled up a deck chair some 15ft away and waited. Over the course of the following hour the Swallows came back to the pile a good 8 or 10 times, swooping down to catch flies, and ultimately land to pull up roots. It took a few test shots and I ended up having to shoot at 1/2500 to catch these incredibly quick birds taking off with their freshly harvested roots.

Before we knew it the month was at an end and we had to say goodbye to our little piece of paradise and return to the UK for a few weeks (I am off on a recce trip to Mull in May). We had many exciting wildlife encounters during the month, some of which we will detail in other blog posts (look out for a piece on our sighting of a Racoon Dog under 2km from our house…….which is the first recorded sighting in this department!). The “official” bird tally for birds spotted within close proximity to our house now stands at 60, including Turtle Dove, Crested Tit, Cirl Bunting, White Stork, Wood Sandpiper and Little Owl, which were all added this trip.

Surprising for me was the lack of larger mammal encounters I had in France on this trip, as although Roe Deer, Boar, Red Fox, and Pine Marten were all recorded on the 9 trail cameras we have around the garden and field, I only saw 1 Wildcat, 2 Foxes and 2 Deer on my entire trip (plus Racoon Dog!). I am hoping it’s because they are busy raising their new-born calves, cubs and piglets! I have left the DSLR camera trap set up in the stand of trees at the top of the field in the hope of catchign one or 2 of them on their night time manoeuvres………..who knows maybe even with their little ones beside them (we can only hope!). Back in the UK I did have a chance encounter with a Roe Deer that I was able to get close enough to get some nice relaxed images of it resting in the cowslips.

I happened to spot this sleepy Roe Deer amongst the Cowslips and managed to creep to within 30ft of it to grab this eye level shot.

So what’s planned for May? Well firstly, subject to “Betty” (the 4x4) being mended, I am off to the Mull and Iona , 2 of the the islands in the Inner Hebrides, to recce suitable shooting locations for Otters, Eagles, Divers, and Corncrake. It will be a great opportunity to top up my portfolio of Scottish wildlife and landscape images, and at the same time get together ideas and locations for a guided photography tour planned for 2024. Once back from Scotland I am expecting to have a mad week or so editing any good shots I have manged to grab on my travels so I can add them to my 2023 entry into the British Wildlife Photography Awards. We will be back in France for the Summer months when we will report on how successful the DSLR camera trap in the woods has been at securing images of our night time visitors, as well as looking in detail at the improvements we will be making to the garden and field to attract even more wildlife. Until then, keep clicking!