Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
At the Kitchen perch at around sunrise this female Sparrowhawk spends a moment.
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The new nervous Kestrel makes a short visit to the meadow post.
Here you get to see both sides of the bird at once.
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All at the same scale: Buzzard, Magpie, Pigeon, and the unexpectedly small Kestrel.
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This Buzzard makes a spectacular landing on the Meadow post
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A Buzzard perched on an 11kV cable.
We assume that this is a young bird - fully mature birds seem to be
too heavy to be comfortable doing this.
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Another sighting of a Buzzard on the meadow post. It is about mid-day despite the dark background. The bird's feathers (particularly over the head) appear drenched.
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Our old house leaks in Rodents. Many are caught and released from live traps, but some just won't or can't use them and have to be caught in snapper traps. Here a dead mouse placed at the trees-tump camera sees a Magpie grateful for the gift. It normally takes between about 4 minutes for a Magpie to come and collect.
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Our preference is to release live Rodent well away from the house. This one looks like a vole - about a third of the Rodents we catch indoors are some sort of vole.
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2 days later a Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) sort-of vaults off the edge of the
tree-stump.
FREEDOM!
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As the pond level rises the easier access to the island at the rear becomes a swim.
Is it now worth a cold swim to check it out?
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This blurry mess (supported by even worse pics a second or two on either side)
shows a fox carrying some unfortunate prey in the mouth at the edge of Round Pond.
Most likely a young Rabbit, but only a guess.
Nighttime pictures of fast moving animals from simple battery-powered trail-cams
need 'long' exposure of 1/16 to 1/4 second, so are always rather movement blurred.
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This Fox still seems obsessed with the Round Pond island, 'sitting' for a moment for a gaze over the water.
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Wood Pigeons now often appearing in pairs.
Finish the last nest in November, start again in January?
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Wood Pigeons now often appearing in pairs.
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Wood Pigeons now often appearing in pairs.
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We admire the male pheasant, even if he flees in terror the moment he sees us. We thought this pic highlighted how strong his legs are - after all, the spurs behind the feet are his built-in weapon.
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5 minutes later the male Pheasant has moved about 40 metres to the 'Round Mound' to continue the search for food. We scatter corn on this slope every day so there is bound to be something to find.
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As the female Reeves' Muntjac Deer quietly browses, a Robin (just above bottom centre) mounts a furious attack on some unidentified similar sized bird.
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If a Grey Squirrel needs some dead leaves for the Drey then they now have millions to choose from!
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Badgers do not hibernate, fattening up in Autumn and then making minimal forages on warmer nights. This Badger has just entered through the East hedge gap and is already rummaging through the leaf litter for food. Actually the Badger had not moved, so this montage is just an 'impression'.
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Not even a distant call of the Green Woodpecker recently, so this pic of a pristine male on the Meadow Post is an unexpected pleasure.
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A Rook perched on a twig takes off to join another flying by.
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A hopefully useful size comparison - Rook (left) and Jackdaw.
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Just before midnight, in an overnight fog, glowing eyes reveal a male Reeves' Muntjac Deer in the foreground watched by a Fox who has made it onto the pond island and is walking along the edge. The Fox probably paddled through the mud on the other side of the island - the water level is very low at the moment - rather than swimming across.
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3 minutes and about 20 metres away we see what must be the same male Deer. He is beginning to look a bit 'beaten up' with the chipped right Antler and a somewhat cut and healed left ear. His 'Tusk' seemed to have survived intact.
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A few days later this female Reeve's Muntjac Deer trips the same sense beam to take her portrait.
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The 'newer' female Kestrel visits the Meadow Post for a few minutes.
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One of the pics not included in the Montage.
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Your's truly out in the pre-dawn gloom with 'headlights' blazing to collect the camera cards, this little face emerged from the surrounding dark and waited for a hand-out. She is only about 1.5 metres from the cameraman.
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This is the almost 'tame' female Reeves' Muntjac Deer stepping over the fallen branch to pick up some of the corn sprinkled down for her. As she triggered the camera and flash for the main image the hand-held camera was recording the same moment (see insert). She didn't react at all to the flash - she must be completely used to cameras clunking and flashing as she wanders around the sites.
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All of the water-butts have a stick in them to allow anything that falls in to crawl out. This perpetually wet stick has grown a nice little crop of Fungi in a micro-jungle of moss.
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Like little flames in a tracery lantern, this group of 3 'Japanese Lanterns' glow in the dark foliage of a small Monkey Puzzle tree they have managed to get tangled into.
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At 07:25 a.m. dawn is only just arriving and this Sparrowhawk is already hunting in the near dark. The bird's Irises are fully open hiding the normal bright yellow eye ring. She must be really hungry to be out so early - as we type this 3 days later we saw her flash by the Kitchen bird feeder only 15 minutes later than this, so these early outings may be a regular event.
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Whoosh. Visually similar to a 'Roadrunner' animation, we can't be sure that the Grey Squirrel in the foreground has any connection to the Pheasant's speed (but see the 3rd image in this sequence).
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Any of the Corvids make better sharers with Pheasants than do Squirrels. The Magpie isn't really nervous of the Pheasant, but noticeably stayed just over one peck distance away.
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A Grey Squirrel seeing off the male Pheasant.
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The Vibrant portrait of the male Pheasant caught a moment where his nictitating membrane (a sort of translucent eyelid) is half closed. Eye detail is in the insert.
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A Magpie watches us watching them from high in this Ash tree
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This Magpie touches down in a flurry of feathers.
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We came across this female Reeves' Muntjac Deer just outside the garage. She spent 20 minutes feeding on fallen leaves and corn we threw down for her, until she wandered into the hedge along the access track. Bottom right you can see the Deer's teeth and tongue.
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This Deer wanders over the whole plot. Here she is probably licking up corn in the meadow.
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As the autumn leaf litter darkens, the matching colours of the Reeves' Muntjac Deer and the ground really show the value of camouflage.
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Pigeons are brilliant fliers, but can be a bit clumsy when landing on a perch, here possibly whacking the occupant on the face.
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On the ground, perhaps trying to use the resident as a trampoline.
The shadow indicates that the landing bird has actually contacted the lower bird.
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One of the female Kestrels landed on the Kitchen perch without triggering a photo, but her dive down the 1.5m to the ground did trigger this photo.
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We haven't seen much of Buzzards or Red Kite this week, but did spot this Buzzard bending down a twig that can just support the bird's weight.
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Roe Deer here are normally fleeting sightings, but for about an hour 3 Roe Deer check out the area for something to eat. From the middle of their visit we pick a 20 minute sequence of appearances
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10 minutes later and about 70m away they are on the concrete access track.
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4 minutes later they have walked up in-line along the edge of the concrete
track and are queueing up to come back in.
Past observations indicate that females can get through these hedge openings,
but that the male's Antlers block this route, and they have to walk around to
reach easier routes.
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Another 6 minutes on sees at least 2 of them 100m right back across the site
to the East hedge.
None of these 4 pics are montages.
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You may know of the Janacek Opera 'The Cunning little Vixen'.
We don't know the sex of this visitor, but they are having a cunning peer around
the tree to surprise anything tasty.
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After midnight on the same night this Fox on the prowl at Round Mound walks directly to the edge of the Round Pond for a drink.
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Two days later this Fox gazes upwards into the trees surrounding Round Pond. Pheasants used to roost in the now broken conifers that fell onto round Mound in the recent storm, and we suspect that they have found a new relatively close roosting perch right where the Fox is looking.
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Our 'almost tame' female Reeves Muntjac Deer gazes up at the photographer
a couple of metres away. Coat pockets are always bulging with corn
to spread around, and this little beauty got some.
We had a strange effect while working on this pic while choosing a size to
show it. We auto-generate a local web page with the whole range of sizes
that we prefer so we can pick one without guessing. Every image that scrolled
up or down for a moment visually had no head as the wonderful colour and pattern
match between face and leaf carpet gave a wonderful demonstration of camouflage.
No - we didn't have magic mushrooms for breakfast - the illusion may work for you.
It did again for us on the final read-through.
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An odd moment of this Grey Squirrel caught by the kitchen window camera.
Close one eye to help thread the invisible needle.
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Ah - a lovely warm patch of sun out of the wind ...
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... but 20 minutes later the tummy is rumbling - and all the food is down on the cold ground.
Reminds us of the Macaques in Japan that spend most of the day luxuriating in a hot
spring but in the end have to come out into the snow to feed.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/snow-monkeys-hot-springs-japan/index.html
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Looking suspiciously smug and 'licking his chops', we wonder whether this fox has just finished eating one of the other inhabitants!
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Some mice and Voles caught in live traps in the house have to be physically
shaken out of the traps. But the moment the trap was open this one leapt
for freedom right over the tree-stump, leaving only the shadow.
"So long - and thanks for all the peanut butter!"
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The Barn Owl visited at the end of the night, ...
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... and then a brief stop a day later after sunset.
Go on - turn round - No? Oh well you are lovely from the back as well!
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While collecting the camera cards before dawn we find this female Reeve's Muntjac Deer quietly pushing aside the snow and leaves to find something to eat. She isn't disturbed by either us nor the camera flash. We left some more corn to lick up.
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The leaves on this fallen branch don't look very appetising to us, but the female Reeve's Muntjac Deer was obviously hungry enough to tackle them.
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This female Reeve's Muntjac Deer picks up the corn with her tongue.
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A female Reeve's Muntjac Deer feeds at the Meadow site for several minutes.
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After a light snow overnight, the day starts with this slightly angry Dawn.
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A Robin in the snow - a living Christmas card (only a few days late)
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A few hours later most of the snow has melted in the direct sun, but here the North East side of all these Molehills has remained in the shade, creating this unusual effect.
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After a failed hunting attempt the female Kestrel flies to this branch where she stays for a couple of minutes intently studying the ground.
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She suddenly dives down onto the grass path behind the pond.
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Read this sequence bottom upwards.
We could just see movement as she smothered her prey (only a blurred brown
on camera) before flying upwards and off towards the Black Poplars along
the access track.
If you look carefully at the insert to the top image you can just see her capture
(it looks to us like a Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse)) grasped in one foot.
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She fortuitously chooses a branch on one of the Black Poplars to consume her prize. The various angles reflect the photographers efforts to find better angles to view the activity through the hedge and against the sun.
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We believe that the original human-tolerant female Kestrel is back. Here she flies quite close to us to land in a tree on the island in the main pond, where she stopped for a hunt. We were both already quite close when she landed for a hunt.
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Left to right and then down, she dives on some prey but obviously
misses her prize and flies to the top of another tree.
More Tomorrow
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The Fox stops off at the tree to the left for a moment of scent marking.
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A few days later, then two consecutive days an hour or two after midnight, it is the tree on the right that gets scent marked with incredibly similar gesture.
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A couple of days later there are 2 Fox visits near the east entrance half an hour apart. Facial marking suggest that they are different foxes. Maybe they prefer different trees to scent mark.
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A Barn Owl makes a brief stop on the Meadow Post.
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5 days later, at an hour and a half after midnight, this gorgeous Barn Owl stops off at the Meadow Post, but this time didn't stay.
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