Who has been eating the roe deer ?

Two weeks ago I blogged about a roe deer carcass which I found in a new red deer wood. I set up my trail camera on the body, expecting to quickly film predators, but by the time I wrote the first blogpost,  hardly anything had come at all, and the body was intact.

Since then, the body has been moved three times, and predation has begun. Of the predators so far, two were expected, one animal I thought would be a predator doesn't seem to be interested, and one other predator has turned up which was a BIG surprise !

Everything I've learned about trail cameras

It's almost a year now that since I bought my first Bushnell trail camera (I bought it with my first book money), and pretty much every night since them it's been out in the woods filming wildlife. It's always exciting going back to it to see what's on it, and it's fun trying to invent new ways to film wildlife. So far I've filmed roe and red deer, foxes, pine marten, squirrels, birds, rabbits,

I'm not an expert, but I've learnt a lot in the last year. I've blogged before about filming my pine marten and red deer herd, but here's pretty much I've learned about using my trail camera from the last year !

The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch (with a video !)

This weekend was the Big Garden Birdwatch which is an event by the RSPB where thousands of people watch their garden for an hour and count what species of birds they see. I'm a member of the RSPB and I done this for years now although often my results weren't very interesting.

Anyone in the UK can take part: here's the link !

I did mine this afternoon. You have to count the most birds of each type you see in one go. Here is what I saw (with a time-lapse video at the end !) Above are some of the birds I usually see on my birdtable. How many do you think I saw today ?

Happy Christmas to everyone !

Happy Christmas to everyone ! I am spending it at home and at grandmas in Scotland. I hope you have a good Christmas and get all the things you ask for.

We don't have snow here at the moment but this robin was in the woods a few weeks ago when we did have snow.

My bone project for the Christmas break is....

Lots of different birds

I've spotted lots of different birds in different places recently, and this I'm going to write about them all.



↑ This bird looks really cool, maybe a bit like a tropical bird like a parrot. I saw it looking out my hall window into the trees opposite, and there were a whole load of them in a tree. I had to go all the way through my bird book to work out they were waxwings, which come from another country in large groups to eat the berries here. They are so rare here there was even a piece in my local newspaper about them. They have a crest and a yellow tip on the tail.

The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

Last weekend I took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch for the RSPB. I had to see what birds landed in my garden, and write down the most I saw at one time.

In my garden is a bird table with peanuts, sunflower seeds and fat balls. We get a quite a lot of birds, but they might get scared off by all the cats in the village. Sometimes my cats bring in birds they have caught.

Winter birds

It's been a great Christmas but very snowy, so it's difficult to see many bones because there is the ground is all covered in lots of snow. Even though its been snowy and cold I've been on lots of walks and seen lots of wildlife, especially birds, so this week I'm just going to write about birds.

Because its been so snowy, the easiest wood to walk in is the Pheasant Wood, on the other side of the river to my village. There are actually lots of pheasant woods around where I live. During the year the gamekeepers look after the pheasants, then in winter people pay to shoot them. Here's a male pheasant on the left with a female pheasant on the right. They have very long tails. I have a pheasant skull in my collection.



Pheasants are quite fat, an they don't like to fly very much, so they just walk around on the ground. Here are what their footprints look like in the snow.