Fresh air

Four and a half years ago I moved to a country village in Sussex and the first thing I noticed was the lack of house sparrows. The village was marked as a place where the air quality was very poor, in fact one of the worst places in Britain. The reason being the vast amount of traffic taking a short cut and comming to a halt every 50m or so because of pedestian crossings, junctions, traffic lights and aircraft from the number of airports in the south east flying over 14 hours a day. With the introduction of lockdown the air now is wonderful, we now have bright blue skies, one can take a deep breath without coughing. I first noticed this change when a couple of hedgehogs appeared in the garden one night, then the foxes and badgers and now the sparrows which I have never seen in the village before. Today, three sparrows spent alot of time comming and going all afternoon.

My garden

With all three of my I/R cameras not working properly I've had to resort to my everyday cameras.
Sitting in the garden with a cup of tea and a camera on my lap I was entertained by a blackbird playing with his food. Tossing it into the air and catching it.

Of course the hedgehog still comes for its supper. The porch light and my flashgun do not seem to bother it at all as he tucks in to the bird seed and dog bisciuts. Now that we have a bit more freedom I shall have to pay a visit to the perigrines. That will have to be done on a quiet weekday.

Hedgehogs

I have three infra-red cameras and all three are not working correctly so I decided to feed the animals and give them a night off from photography. I could not resist grabbing my camera when these two appeared and using flash it would not work through the window so I dashed outside and these are the pictures that I got.

 The  porch auto light came on which I thought they would make a dash for it, but no, I moved round to get a better position when they separated and carried on eating.

 They sat still so I started talking to them and to my surprise they just looked at me and carried on eating.

 This one was a bit shy but after a few minutes he settled down and totally ignored me, in fact I stepped over him several times with no response.

My animals

These three pictures were taken on my infra-red camera within a few hours of each other last night. The camera was set about 1m from my front door. The hedgehog is one of 4 photographed last night.

The badger is one of a pair that live in a copse  about 200m down the road. It would have to come past a dozen houses to reach me. No wonder it doesn't come till about 3 in the morning.

The fox is 1 of 3 which come anytime. I find it astonishing for them to visit my garden. To do it they have to come down a well lit road that has traffic on it most of the night.

Fox and hedgehog

I am still finding plenty to do during this lockdown. The animals are very obliging and visiting every night and as you can see they get on well together. The camera is put out most nights and takes anything up to 600 photo's, so I have plenty to do the following day. The photo's are only for record purposes so I know what came, how long it was there and what it got up to.

I have no control once the camera is set, so many photo's are discarded because the subject moved, was too close or partly in shot.  I only save one in about 100 shots. It keeps me busy while I am stuck at home. I now have 2 badgers, 4 hedgehogs and 3 foxes which visit on a regular basis.