CCTV from the end of the garden!
This week I took delivery of a new gadget. An Apeman H55 trail cam… (Clearly I don’t need another gadget! But I’ve had me eye on a trail cam for a while and they’re as cheap as chips on Amazon, so what the heck).
So my great plan is to see what visits the garden after dark. I know I get deer and foxes and badgers, because I’ve seen clues such as holes in the lawn and deer poo and footprints everywhere.
Here’s what happened.
First things first, I picked up some road kill. A nice looking hen pheasant, good enough to eat! If you look at the photo I tied her up and nailed her down with some tent pegs — I didn’t want her being dragged off out of sight of the camera.
Step 2, set up the trail cam. I popped it on a tripod and pointed it in the right direction. It’s a little but fiddly, not as intuitive as an iPhone but simple enough. I adjusted some of the standard settings to record longer clips, but it pretty much works straight out of the box.
So all set and ready to go! Here’s some video of the first night…
Night 1
A couple of clips of the local moggies and a brief visit from Mr Fox at 03:46. I might have expected the fox to be more interested, but perhaps he’d already eaten! Foxes like to eat carrion, but maybe the pheasant looked like too much trouble.
Night 2
A little bit disappointed with the results of night one, it was a bit tame. But not as disappointing as night two. Nothing turned up on night two, not even the local cats!
Night 3
Night three. After a couple of days of rotting in the April sunshine, the dead pheasant was kicking off a bit of a pong! Surely something would happen this evening? I wasn’t let down!
An early visit from the local cats and a badger, and the briefest glimpse of a fox. But the showstopper was right at the end of the night when Mr Badger did a total demolition job of the pheasant. What a beast! And what a clean-up job!
All that’s left is a couple of feet, some string and two tent pegs!
Bepton Ranger 