Unexpected encounters with birds of prey

 

The camera trap is pointing at the badgers' set, poised just above a big dark hole in the ground and, sure enough, it catches some images of the badger. However, most unexpectedly it also catches  a tawny owl. 

Shortly after the owl flies off, here is the badger in the same spot.

This is not the only bird of prey to be unexpectedly caught by the traps. In the bottom left of the next snippet of film is a buzzard. 

Spring reaches the deer and the badgers in the wood

Sometimes if you stay in one place and just look at things, you see more than if you are running about all over the place and not really looking. 

This is the case with the remote little piece of woodland where I left a camera trap last week. The camera was poised over an area of fresh digging just outside a big hole in the ground. 

What the images show is the 'dayshift' and the night shift. During the day, a roe deer female (a doe) in moult (thick grey winter fur giving way to her ruddy Spring and Summer coat)  comes by (she has a good look at the camera as you can see in the photo mediately below) and, at night, we can see badger improving the entrance to his set. 

Not at all sure what badger is doing here - possibly he is contemplating moving the whole tree.

Meet the fox in the woods!