The River Otter

Hi everyone, sorry that there hasn't been a post for a good while. Hopefully my next few posts will make up for the recent lack of them. I have four (including this one) coming soon so stay tuned for them. Anway, lets get into today's post.

Last week I was in Devon and there was one animal in particular that I wanted to see: wild beavers. About half an hour from where we were staying was the river otter, a UK hotspot for wild beavers. Beavers are very rare in the UK so we had to try our luck at spotting them there. The beavers here were reintroduced (they went extinct a few hundred years ago due to hunting) illegally in 2008 before more were legally introduced in 2015 in a government approved trial. The phrase 'beaver bombing' refers to the illegal release of beavers which has seen small numbers pop up all over the UK. Until this year due to new laws, it was extremely hard for legal releases of beavers to take place; most projects (such as the ones I've seen at Trentham) are ones that are released into large scale enclosures where they are techinichallly not wild but they live wild lives. Anyway, enough about the beavers for now as we saw lots of wildlife on the estuary before we made it onto the main stretch of the river otter. These next photos include some of the bird life we saw including egrets, cormorants, oystercatchers and others:

While we were sat behind a screen looking over a reedbed with more little egrets than I think I've ever seen before, something exciting happened. It wasn't beavers - two whimberels (a rare bird related to a curlew that I had never seen before) flew in and landed in amongst the reeds. I didn't get any great photos, but it was still great to tick a new bird off. 

After that we made it off the estuary and up the river. We walked up and down it for a good hour or so in the evening (beavers come out at dawn and dusk) but were pretty unsuccessful. We decided to sit and wait looking over a gap where you could see through the trees onto the river. This didn't work for the beavers, but we did get a glimpse of a kingfisher that landed on a post a good way away and I managed to finally get the shot I've been trying so hard to get for ages:

I was so happy to get this photo and seeing as it looked like we weren't going to see any beavers it still made the journey worthwhile. It was getting late and my mum started to walk back while I went a little bit further upstream for one last go at seeing something. However, after about five minutes my mum phoned me to say that she had found one, and I ran back all the way to where she was (I slowed down at the end so I didn't scare it). But by the time I had got there it had gone. And it didn't look like it was going to come out again. That was until it reappeared further upstream and I finally managed to see it! You could even hear it chomping on a twig. Here are the photos I got:

This is my favourite shot:

Here's another good one:

Seeing the beaver has been my favourite spot since the red squirrels in Scotland. It was great to see such a rare animal. That is all for today's post. Thanks for reading!

Slimbridge & Shropshire

 Last week were headed south to spend a couple nights in the campervan in Somerset. On the way back up we stopped in Gloucestershire at a campsite near WWT Slimbridge. Slimbridge is brilliant for bird watching and that was instantly clear as in the first hide we went to there were views of one of the UK's best birds - the avocet. I've seen avocets before at RSPB Burton Mere but it was great to see them again. Avocets are one of britians most interesting looking birds (their upturned beak helping with feeding) and they are the bird on the RSPB's official logo. They're probably my favourite wader.

Here is a nice one of an oystercatcher:

While at Slimbridge there was one bird I was desperate to see in particular - the UK's tallest bird: the common crane. We did see two of them from the next hide but they were super far away (probably just under a mile away). The camera does have a brillaint lens but the photos still weren't great:

We stopped for lunch and then walked around to the other side of the reserve towards a tower hide that overlooks the estuary. On the way, we stopped at a hide looking onto a reed bed where several reed warblers kept giving us fleeting glimpses. I've never phtographed one before, so we waited a couple of minutes until I got lucky and managed to get a couple of brilliant photos. 

From the tower hide we saw barnacale geese, greylag geese and even more cranes. They were still a really long way away though:

We could spot two more cranes much closer to another hide though, so I decided to walk round there. On the way there I saw these avocet chicks which are super cool:

I got to the other hide and I was right - the cranes were much closer and I finally got the photos I was after. Here are my best shots of the UK's tallest bird:

Here's a photo of a reed warbler I took while in the same hide:

That was everything we saw at Slimbridge, but here are some more photos from a river near the campsite. They include mandarin ducklings, a damslefly and a cignet. 

 The next stop on the way home was Shropshire. Here are some photos I took while out on a walk.

One of the best parts of my walk was how quiet it was - I didn't see another person the whole time. I found a spot with a brillaint view but also noticed a bird I hadn't seen in a good while - the linnet. Not just one either, there were several hopping about the bushes in front of me. This allowed me to take some brillaint pictures, probably some of the best I have taken of a passerine before. Here are some ones of a female linnet:

And here are some brilliant shots of a male linnet:

The next day we stopped off at the national trust site carding mill valley. I was hoping to spot a ring ouzel, which I did get a glimpse of, but didn't manage to get a photo. I also heard quite a few whinchats but didn't get a picture. My best picture I took there was probably this one of a wild pony with the shropshire hill in the background. 

Here are a couple photos of a wren and a chaffinch.

That's all for today's post. Some more great photos and sightings to add to the year. Remember to leave a comment and thanks for reading.

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!