Hi everyone, it's quite a special post this week as June 10th marks five years since I started my blog . In the last five years, I've made 130 posts, and today we are going to look back at some of my favourite moments and my favourite footage from my blog so far.
2020
On June 10th 2020 I made my first post. It was quite a simple one; I had just got my first camera trap in lockdown and tested it out in my garden. A few days later I put the camera out in these woods that I'd never really been to before bu they were near my house so I gave it a try. We got a squirrel and a songthrush in the space of a day or so. I moved the camera trap to another new location. Back then I was only 8 so I didn't really know what to expect. Something like a fox or a badger would be a miracle to get is what I thought. Well, I only left it out for one night, but on that night our first ever snuffling badger passed by:
It got even better as a few days later we got a fox which is in one of my oldest posts, "Steady Fox". There was one thing a little bit dissapointing about that video as the fox's head was partly off-screen. And who knows? That might be the only fox and the only badger we would ever get on the camera. Perhaps it was just some beginners luck. Well, in the location that was where my next post "The Robin and the mouse" was located we did get another glimpse of a badger in the background, although for some reason I didn't upload it to my blog at the time. June 2020 was a busy month for my blog with another post releasing just a few days later. In this post ("Calm Clearing - 2 rainy days in June") I put the trail camera out in this small clearing on the complete other side of the woods to all my previous posts. On the first day we got this stunning photo of a fox; the first time we had one fully in the frame.
That spot now is flooded, but another spot featued in the same post is still dry. After a day in the clearing I moved it several metres up the bank and wedged it in a hole in the bottom of a tree. We got another fox, a jay and a magpie. This spot became one of my most used spots ever and has produced some much loved footage over the years as you will see later in the post. Here is the fox up on the bank:
August 2020 was an exciting month for me and the blog. I'd just had a new camera after the first one broke and me and my Dad went to the forest of Dean in an attempt to find some wild boar. While we didn't find any boar, It was still a great trip as we managed to record our first ever deer. On one night, it was a big fallow deer walking past:
On the second night we caught our first and only ever Muntjac deer. Muntjacs are an animal I'd like to record more of but never really have. I've been to the Dean two times since this trip (as you will find out about later) but haven't been able to. There are a few other places closer to home (not the regular woods though) that I am aware that they live there so I will have to try there one day.
Once back at home I slowed down a bit with the blog, only producing one more post in 2020. The post, "November Foxes" is one of my favourites as it was the first time we got two foxes in the same clip.
In this post, the camera is in the same area as it was before we went to the Dean, and it was my favourite bit of fox footage in 2020. To get two in the same video is something that I'd never had before, and up until the end of 2024, I'd only had once after.
2021
Like the second half of 2020, I didn't make many posts in 2021 - only 4. My first post of the year, "Winter Badger" was just a few photos of a badger we got in January on top of a big slope halfway between the first few locations and the ones where we got all of that fox footage. At the bottom of the big slope there is a small stream which we will come to later in the post. I put the camera out at several locations along the top of the slope and we caught several clips of badgers, birds and even one of a fox having a poo. There is another slope on the other side of the river (a lot less steeper) which loads of bluebells always grow on every year. One day, we were walking along the field at the top of the bluebell slope when we saw something moving on the slope on the other side of the river. It was a badger, and soon retreated into its sett. Now we knew where the sett was we returned a few days later with some better cameras to see what we could record. A few hours went by and we had seen a fox pass through but no badgers. Just as we were about to leave two badgers came out of the sett. We watched them for about 15 minutes before they headed off into the woods at night. 
2022
Keeping on the theme of the badger sett, the first post of 2022 was the camera trap by the sett. We got our first and only ever footage a badger in daylight. Even better, it was a baby badger:
We also got a few adults and one video where you can even hear the cubs play fighting off screen.
We got a few more badgers, foxes and even a rabbit pass by. However, the best footage we got in 2022 was in April. Most of the time, I only left the camera trap out for a few days at a time but one week I decided to give it a week to see what we would get. A week or so before this, my neighbour told me that he was sure he saw something that looked like a deer in the woods. I was surprised at this as deer typically prefer much larger woodland, or that's what I thought anyway. The camera was out at the same spot where caught the foxes in 2020, in the post "calm clearing - 2 rainy days in June". The first few captures were some of the usuals; a badger and a fox just a few hours apart. Already a good week. A few days later was the most eventful day yet. At 13:PM we got our second ever pheasant. A really nice picture and a video of it strutting past. At 15:PM we got one of the most surprising videos ever on my blog; 2 roe deer passing through. One buck and one doe. We several images and several clips of them before they walked off into the woods.
A few hours later a fox passed by as well. For the rest of the week we only got a few birds (such as song thrushes and pigeons) and a few squirrels. The deer were are a standout for that week and also for the year. Unfortunately, a few weeks after the week when we got the deer, my camera got taken in Nottingham forest. That meant that my blog had to stop posting new footage for a while. I had to wait until Christmas to get a new camera and so my blog could properly start back up again in 2023. Perhaps this camera would be better?
2023
The first post of 2023 wasn't a camera trap post - it was just a few photos of some buzzard feathers I found. The next post was of the first time I'd put the new trail camera out. We got some great January day-time fox footage including a bit of a fight just in the corner of the screen. The foxes also came back several times at night throughout that week in the snow at night and even a badger turned up on the Friday night. It became one of my most popular posts. Here is the daylight fox:
At the start of February I tried a new spot, about 75 metres away from where I usually put it. That week was brilliant for badgers, and we got a few foxes at night too. Looking back, the standout for me isn't actually the badgers like it was back then but it's actually a pheasant that we got passing by. It is the last pheasant we've ever had until now. Like I said earlier they are a bird I would like to get more of on the camera trap. Maybe I will only ever get one per trail camera, as the other two pheasants were on the other two cameras. I've seen them nearby just a few fields away and I'm sure I heard one in the woods
when picking the camera trap up just a few weeks before writing this.
Pheasants are also a good prey item for foxes, and with so many of them in a small patch of woodland maybe there's a reason why we don't seem to get many pheasants anymore. Anyway, pheasants are one to look out for on the blog and seeing as my camera is out most weeks maybe it's just a matter of time before we get another one. Any cool birds are always high up the list of species to get on the camera trap and around the time when we got the third pheasant some of the birds I wanted the most were a woodpecker and at the top of the list was an owl. The next post was a special one as for once we got no badgers or foxes, but we did get some other really cool animals. First up was the roe deer stag at the crack of dawn, still in velvet which makes sense for the time of year. The other animal was one I just mentioned; the tawny owl. It was my favourite bit of footage from 2023.
In early April I got some nice bird footage at a local lake. Some really good heron footage was accompanied by some really good buzzard footage that was taken in the regular woods. The buzzards have become a staple part of the woods and it seems that recently (especially in 2025) I see them most days down at the woods. A lot of the time you hear them before you see them - making a sound that sounds a bit like a cat. They don't completely rule the skies though as I've seen that the corvids of the woods can chase them off. There is a huge roost of jackdaws that will attack them on sight, same with the crows and jays. However, their biggest rival are the ravens who nest at the top of the hill on the edge of the woods and are roughly the same size as the buzzards. I've even seen a red kite in the area lately who could easily overpower a buzzard, although they typically don't come into contact with each other.
I took apart an old robin's nest from my garden, and found some exoskeletons and other bits in it. In the post after I left the camera trap out again. We caught some great jay footage and some even better fox clips but the animal that stood out was the rabbit. They're a suprising rarity for my woods; I've only ever recorded two. Like the pheasants I've seen them in several other places nearby but just not in the regular woods. They're another one to look out for. Fox sightings are regular for me when I'm out on evening trips as seen in the first two posts of May. On the camera trap we caught some of the regulars - badgers and squirrels - and some more deer footage. To this day, I would probably title this as my favourite deer footage. Go check out the post "I had no iDEER we would get this" to see all the footage and I will leave one of the photos here:
The quality in some of the clips is really good. Also, in a lot of these older bits of footage the dates came out wrong. In June, we managed to get a few clips of some older fox cubs. We only got some night time footage, although later in this post you will see that we have had some even better fox cub footage this year. I managed to get out and record a few more birds elsewhere, even in Italy. Some of my favourites were the little egrets and goosanders.
It wasn't until September when the next interesting trail camera post came out. The week had a very warm, orangy tint about it, whith the long grass begining to die, the very first few leaves starting to change into autumnal colours and the sun being out in a lot of the footage. The animals were a very orangy colour as well, a fox passing by and even a few does in their rusty summer hides passed through. It started to seem that the deer were appearing more and more frequently. Aside from some more camera trap footage of a soggy badger, the highlight of october was a sighting of the deer in person. I haven't seen them in the flesh since. In December, to end the year I put the camera out by the badger setts again. We got some really cool footage of them bringing fresh bedding into the burrow and also some nice footage of them entering and exiting the burrow. Overall, 2023 was undoubtedly the best year yet. Could 2024 compete?
2024
2024 got off to a bit of a slow start. I had to rely on the badger sett to get any good footage and it wasn't until February when we really started to record some good stuff. A treecreeper was caught on the camera trap and I haven't seen one or had one on the trail camera in the blog woods since. Seeing some egyptian geese and some little egrets close to home was cool as well. But the highlight of not only the winter, not only the year but for me the best footage from five years of the blog came in late February (like the owl the year before). A few days by the badger sett resulted in some amazing footage of two badgers fighting, not just play-fighting but an actual bloody scrap. For the full post, go check out "badger fight". Here is the clip:
Unfortunatley, that fight also seemed to be the end of badgers living in the sett, as we've had deer, birds and foxes around the burrows, but hardly any badgers. My favourite sighting of April was a bat which I saw in daylight flying around the lake. On occasions when I have been to the blog woods at night, I have seen loads of bats in the open fields. Other sightings include a few skylarks seen in the peak district. There was a great week in may when we got loads of deer footage, including some at night which is something we had never had before.
The deer have and always will seem strange to me. It's what I expect when going to a bigger forest such as the Dean but for such a small area of woodland they seem quite out of place. The woods are a weird zig-zag snake shape but from one end to another it is roughly 1.2km. I've never really shown you a full shot of the woods before, but to give you an idea of size there is a photo I've taken with the drone below. As you can see, quite small even for a roe deer although fields and more woodland stretch either way. I first started putting the camera trap up at the top by the much thicker bit (like in the posts "badger sighting" and
"steady fox" but I usually put it in the area on the
The deer became really common theoughout the summer and even more so than the foxes and badgers as you will see. One of my favourite posts was also one taken in my garden of a female sparrowhawk. It was really cool to get something as exciting as that right by my house. Saying that, the blog woods are right by my house as well, only a few hundred metres away from my house.
The deer do wander about and away from the woods; one was rescued from the canal nearby before running off again. We also get them less and less during the colder months.
We went down to Devon in late summer and recorded some interesting birds at Seaton Wetlands. However, the highlight of the summer had to be the fallow deer we recorded in the forest of
Dean. Not only did we record the adults, but we even got a fawn on the trail camera as well. I highly recommend checking out that post "Fallow Deer in the Forest of Dean" as it is one of my all-time favourite posts.
We also bought a van in late summer and on our first trip out in the peak district I recorded some great red kite clips. In October our first and only daylight fox was recorded on the camera trap along with the roe buck. I have to admit 2024 was a dissapointing year for fox footage. But don't worry as you will soon see (or you might know already) how well we are doing for foxes in 2025. In Autumn of 2024 we headed off to north Yorkshire and manged to record some new species, such as different waterfowl, turnstones and tree sparrows. Doxey marshes has also been a great local location recently, along with Sanbach flashes where I've recorded loads of new bird species. Some of my favourites from these two locations have been ringed teal, great and cattle egrets, pintails, gadwalls and a barnacle goose (seen in both 2024 and 2025).
In very late November we had some early snow, and on the trail camera we got the buck at night in it. We also got the doe as well in the day. It was the last week of the year, at the end of december, and I decided to get the camera out over Christmas. I didn't put it in the regular spot though. I put it in the same spot that we got the third pheasant and loads of badgers in. As you will see, so much has been turning up there that I haven't put out in the old regular spot since. It was thick with fog on Christmas Eve, but we still caught a few foxes passing through. They appeared again on Christmas morning. On boxing day not only did we get a jay, but we also got two deer passing through. The photo below is of one of them early on boxing day morning.
Unfortunatley we lost a few days of footage due to a badger knocking the camera trap over. 2024 was certainly a great year though, especially for deer which we seemed to get more of than the regular badgers and foxes. As you will see, I've been using this spot so far for most of 2025, and its paid of well. So then, lets see what we've had so far this year.
2025
We had some snow during the first and second week of 2025. That didn't deter much from the camera trap though as loads of foxes turned up throughout the week. On one of the first nights we got a video of two of them together, a dog and a vixen I believe as it is the fox mating season in January.
We got another great shot of one of them at night eating the food I'd put out (below to the left).
One turned up twice in the cold daylight as well, meaning that we'd had more daylight foxes in the first week of 2025 than in the whole of 2024. Foxes weren't the only animal of interest that week either as we had a flock of redwings for the first time which stuck around the woods until mid-march. We have had foxes pretty much every week for the last year (one exception) and at least two (maybe more) jays as well. One of the jays has a patch of chestnut brown feathers on the blue part of its right wing which is how I can tell it apart from the rest. A few weeks went by, and we got one fox in particular which started to come by; a vixen who obviously had cubs in her den (you could tell as she had teats). The first time I noticed here as an individual was when we got this amazing photo of her out in midday, at the start of March (below to the right). I've had loads of epic footage of the vixen this year, but for me this shot of her looking of into the distance is definitely my favourite by far. The only other one that even comes close is a shot of her looking right into the lens taken in April. The week in mid-march was quite eventful as not only did we get some nice footage of some birds such as redwings and nuthatches, but we also had a photo of a mystery beast
that I can't figure out what it was. I also set the camera up by the small stream in March as well. The stream is at the bottom of the two slopes and is a bloodstream in the woods, with so much wildlife and plant life relying on it. You could see that on the camera trap, as two grey wagtails were constantly hunting for insects along the river.
Over the last few days of March and the first few days of April the deer made their first appearance of the year. There have been two of them about; the doe and the buck (which was still in velvet at the time). They appeared twice that week both times when the sun was only just beginning to show.
Along with a dipper on the river Churnet, the next post also had a nice picture of a woodpecker which I took in blog woods. I also recently found their nest and one even turned up on the trail camera lately.
The week after the deer first turned up they appeared agin, this time the buck no longer had any velvet on his antlers and was recorded marking its territory by my camera (weeing right next to it). A few days later we got an even better shot of it again (right). The bluebells came out really strongly over the next few weeks, and we got some beautiful footage of the vixen coming to grab some of the food I left out in the bluebells. We got the deer a few times over the next few weeks as well, but the highlight of the year so far has been the fox cubs which the vixen has been raising. It was the first week of May when the vixen turned up at night with one of them, and a few days later she was with two. I moved the trail camera to a spot where I had even seen one of them and set it up for two weeks. Over those two weeks they were caught numerous times, playing in the day and at night. It turns out that there are four of them, so the vixens done well to raise them. I've even seen them twice, the second time there were two of them sat there for a good five minutes before retreating into their den (right by where the trail camera was). Here is one of the photos I took of them:
The fox cubs have been the highlight of the year so far, but that doesn't mean that they should overshadow some of the other animals on the camera trap. My favourite animals in the woods, the badgers, have made plenty of appearances in the new spot, with my favourite photo so far this year being below. The only other post this year is my most recent one, from a recent trip to the Forest of Dean where we caught a fallow deer on the camera trap.
So that's pretty much been 5 years of my blog. It's really interesting when you spend so much time setting up cameras and spotting things in such a small area. I've seen and recorded dozens of species in these woods over the last 5 years and hopefully it will continue that way. Remember to keep checking out my blog with new posts coming out every week. Maybe if the blog is still around then we will be doing another similar post in 5 years time, marking the tenth birthday of my blog. But for now, that's the end of this post. Who knows what's to come in the next few years. We will have to wait and find out. Thank you all for reading and commenting over the last 5 years and feel free to leave another comment now. Bye, from Joe.
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