Although we are spotting wildlife in the garden during the day, there are some creatures using the garden in the night, when we don’t see them. When we did a survey at the Queen’s Road Allotments a couple of years ago, we were lucky to be able to put up all kinds of cameras that captured animals and birds during the night and in the early hours of the morning when there was no-one around. I have heard owls in the trees round our garden at night, and sometimes in the late evening I have seen bats.
A week or two ago, I found some droppings in the garden that looked like hedgehog droppings, so I decided to try to get some video. I have a cheap camera that is designed for use as a security camera. It has infra-red LEDs on the front and can be configured to start videoing when it detects motion. It has a battery, but it doesn’t last long, so I connected it to a USB power pack to keep it going through the night. I set it up in a pile of bricks, with some protection over the top to keep it dry, though we haven’t needed protection from rain recently!
I set it up near where there is a hole in the fence that we had put in when the garden was refenced, and near to our shed, with a dish of water. Here’s the result, shot at 1.52 am on Saturday morning. It’s grey and grainy because it is shot in infra-red light.
I was walking past St Guthlac’s churchyard late one night this week (with dogs) when I heard a loud snuffling and grunting. The dogs went mad and I thought perhaps there was a badger digging. But no, it was a pair of hedgehogs. I never knew they made such a noise.