Charlie comes sniffing round

Living in deepest suburbia, we don't get to see the wildlife you'd encounter in the countryside, although it's surprising what we do see, either in the garden or when we're out walking the dogs in the local woods. One of the nice things about Surrey is that there are acres of public commons where you're free to walk, cycle, ride, etc; paradoxically in the countryside you tend to be more restricted where you can go, as so much of the land is owned and farmed by someone.

When I moved here, around 20 years ago, it was rare to see a fox. Nowadays you can almost guarantee to spot a few if you're driving late at night, and we often come across signs of them in the garden and in the road outside the house. They're still quite shy, mostly, unlike some places where they are becoming very bold.

I caught this one on a trailcam, sniffing round the duck pen at the end of the garden. I knew we had a fox visiting, but I'm glad I didn't bother sitting up for it as the trailcam didn't snap it until 3.35am. This one looks less keen on the ducks and more interested in sniffing where the labs have been.

I'm reasonably confident that the duck pen is as foxproof as it can be, but I'll keep a close eye on the situation!

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Someone's after my ducks!

Of course I could be wrong, but this looks suspiciously like Charlie has been scratching at the duck pen trying to find a way in.

It's getting cold at night and those ducks must look awfully tempting. We lost the last lot of ducks to a fox on a particularly cold night - Charlie had ignored them up til then.

I've set up one of the excellent Minox DTC600 trail cameras to watch the pen so I can find out more. For the technically minded, that's a pigeon hide pole, with a Manfrotto 143BKT bracket which just happens to fit perfectly - it's a super easy way to place a trail camera anywhere you can drive in the spike, and adjust the height and angle by loosening a single screw.

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Tracking down the Preston Puma

Here's a video I made about David Glyn Jones, who is on the trail of what he believes is a puma living wild on some rough ground just outside his home town of Preston. David is deaf, which to my untrained eye appears to go some way to explaining why he is more observant than average. Plus he's been tracking wildlife since he was a boy, and loves spending time outdoors. He can look at a tree branch, patch of Himalayan balsam or a grass field and spot signs that I wouldn't have noticed in a million years. Tracking down whatever-it-is has become something of an obsession for him. I managed to borrow a couple of trail cameras from Minox to help with his quest. I went to visit him at home last week, and this is the result.

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