Chinese Deer In Staffordshire

Today's post is a camera trap one, but not one from the fox denn like I had said. There will be a post on that out soon, but first we will have a look a some footage from a different location. If you remember last year, I set up the camera trap in the Churnet valley to try and get some footage of the UK's smallest deer species - the muntjac. I didn't get any muntjacs on the camera trap, but I did get a sparrowhawk and a bat. I also set it up in a different place in the valley for a few weeks, but didn't get a thing. There have been quite a few sightings of muntjac in the churnet valley but as far as I am aware there is no public footage of any (I believe Staffordshire wildlife trust have had footage of them on camera traps they set up to observe wether or not there might be a very small pine marten population in the valley). The only other place in Staffordshire that I am aware of a muntjac population is Cannock Chase which is quite a bit further away to me than the Churnet valley (there likely will be other populations elsewere in the county).  

Anyway, a few weeks ago I set up the camera trap in a new spot at the top of the valley in an area of woodland where the trees are very sparse, and the ground is covered in bracken which is perfect muntjac habitat. I had found an obvious trail and strapped the camera up to a tree to see what it would pick up. 

Historically, muntjac are a recent addition to Britian's fauna. Like with most british deer, they escaped from wealthy estates in the 20th century after being brought over from China. The owners of estates liked excotic deer and it is the same story for fallow deer, sika deer and the very rare chinese water deer. The main source of the UK 's (most notably England's) muntjacs was an escape from Woburn park in the early 20th century, where they have spread across the country up to the west midlands and have become very common in the home counties. They have spread pretty much everywhere now from the midlands and south, with one population being in the Forest of Dean where I had a few dodgy photos of them on the camera trap in 2020 while searching for wild boar.  There are a few small pockets of them in Wales and no established population in Scotland despite the odd one being reported. Northern English counties are a bit a of a grey area. They wouldn't have all come from Woburn, with a few other escapes and releases likely. However they got there, there is an established population in the Churnet valley in Staffordshire. They're the animals I wanted to get footage of. 

Flash forward a couple of weeeks and you get to today. I went to get my camera trap and upon arrival learned that the memory card had got full after 3 days, which is a bit annoying as I likely missed out on some footage between then and now. The odd thing was that as I flicked through the photos and videos, nothing appeared to be there - it seemed to all just be leaves or something blowing in the wind that for some reason set the camera off constantly which is something I will have to fix. I was beginning to lose hope and started to wonder wether all the footage was like this when a finally had something. A squirrel. However, the next few files seemed to have something a little bit bigger. In the early morning hours, two muntjac appeared out of the bracken and onto the trail I had found:

My knowledge on muntjacs isn't great, but as far as I'm aware I didn't all the deer where female as none had antlers although I could be wrong. The next night was also succesful. First was this great video of a  badger (only my second badger clip of the year but it is a really good video):

Then two more muntjac appeared. One of them is a bit smaller than the other but I can't tell wether it is particularly young or not. It is possibily though as they give birth at any time of year and it would show that it is a healthy breeding population.

Muntjac are super quick, as this clip in the morning shows:

I believe we got fooatge of about 3, and it is the best footage that we got of them:

Unfotunatlley, that was all we got before the memory card ran out of space. I'll have to put it out there again soon. It's another one to tick off after three attempts at recording them, and another one that I've ticked off in this brilliant spring for the blog. Anyway, that's all for todays post. Remember to leave a comment and thanks for reading!