Trailcam 'Time-Out' Video #2

Hello there, welcome back. This is going to be another trail cam video, but it's one that is a little bit different. It's bending the rules. If you remember in that very first video, I laid out the rules as to where I was going to set the cameras, where I wasn't going to set the cameras, but this one's a little bit different. A couple of nights ago, I was out for a walk in the local fields and woodland and so on. And it was pitch black, beautiful starry sky, and in a nearby wood, possibly about half a mile away from my house, I heard somebody blasting away with a shotgun when it was pitch black, which isn't a good time to be shooting, unless you're using a lamp and a rifle. But that was Sunday at about three o'clock on the Monday afternoon. Which was more or less a day later, I noticed a pigeon sitting all hunched up, looking really sorry for itself, in the rain, in one of the trees in my wood. And as I was watching it, it actually just dropped out of the tree and hit the ground. And then this morning, which is the Tuesday, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, there was another one dropped out of another tree in my wood. That one has also been shot, so that one lasted nearly two days. Nearly two days peppered with shot, which is, that's just awful. I'm going to use these pigeons, and I'm going to put them in two different places. You can think of that as baiting a particular area but it highlights the fact that when people have been shooting birds do fly away for miles and they're landing trees in the middle of nowhere and then for the next few days they'll be dropping out of those trees for the foxes and badgers, stoats, weasels, wild cats. That'll be like manna from heaven for them. I'm going to be using two cameras in this video so I'm going to kind of combine two hunts as it were in one video. Both the cameras I'm using are Bushnell 14 megapixel aggressor cameras, one is low glow, one is no glow. Now let's get out there and see what we get. Okay, the wood behind me there, that's a pine wood, mostly consisting of larch trees. That's where the shooting was going on, and I'm standing just about on my boundary here. So, possibly half a mile away. There'll probably be a ring of death around that wood as the birds have just dropped into woodland, into fields and so on. With this particular one, we're going to imagine that it hasn't quite made my wood. It did, but only just. We're going to say it came down about 20 yards into that field there. So I've got this little stake. I'm actually going to stake this down so we hopefully get extended footage of whatever chooses to feed on this. The last thing I want is for a fox to run into the shot, pick it up and run away, so hopefully we can get a video of something. And to make it more authentic to anything flying around, like a sparrowhawk, goshawk, buzzard, red kite or something, I'm actually going to create an impact point. So there'll be an impact point with a few feathers, and then another impact point with another few feathers, and then there'll be the bird lying there. So from the air, it will look like a natural crash site. I'm not going to give you the gruesome close-up, but we've basically got a pigeon lying on its back with its wings out. I've got great hopes for this one. Alright, so there we've got our initial bounce, bounce, bounce, and then we've got our dead bird lying. And that's approximately, I don't know, 15 yards away from this tree. And that's where I'm going to put the camera. You know, it's pretty much just guesswork setting these things. You've got to imagine where it's looking. Hopefully it's looking at the crash site. Hopefully we'll get a predator. Picking it up. Right, camera's still there, which is good. Nobody has stolen it. This is actually two mornings later. The first morning, nothing had touched that pigeon. It had just come out this morning, and it's gone. And it looks like something's had a good old go at it as well, so we should have some cracking footage here. See the wooden peg there? That was what was holding it down. Hopefully we've got some good footage on this one. Let's see. Right, for this second one, we're going to imagine that the pigeon that was shot Managed to get into a tree, and then it fell, and it landed up there. The reason that I'm doing this, and you're going to have to use imagination, Imagination. is that I don't want ground-based predators, because we've already had foxes and badgers. And up there, when I'm standing down here looking up, I can see that there's little bits of twigs and grass and so on up there that looks like a bird of prey. Has landed something there, whether it be another bird or possibly not a bird because there's no feathers underneath the tree, possibly mice up there and eaten them up there. It looks like an eaten post for a bird of prey. Therefore, I'm hoping that we can get some sort of owl, possibly the sparrowhawk. I would love a goshawk, but I don't think that's going to happen. Maybe it's even a kestrel. I would imagine that the corvids would come. That's the various crows, magpies and jays. But that just seems like a good spot. And I know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking, well, hold on, if you perch it up there, something's going to land on it. It's going to fall off. Well, it isn't going to fall off because I'm also going to stake, what should I say, nail this one down. Yeah, I'm going to nail it down. I've got a big nail. Nice, fat hammer. It's going to get nailed down. camera set right it'll have framed it absolutely beautifully so we'll just have to see what it produces but I'll give you a look and show you what I've done. Just see the pigeon in the center of the frame there and we've got a beautiful kind of almost like a table like structure up there where those multiple limbs come out so we've got camera there table there and the distance between those two is approximately 2.5 meters about 8 feet the one that's up in this tree Is the Bushnell 14 megapixel low-glow aggressor camera. I think I'll check this one daily because if a bird of prey has come there and it's pulled the pigeon to bits, there'll be feathers all over the ground underneath the tree. That'll be a good indicator that it's time to get the camera down because there'll be nothing left of the pigeon. This is almost a week later and believe it or not it's taken the birds or whatever it is that's been eating that pigeon up there that long. to find it and do something about it and do something about it they have judging by the state of that absolute devastation looks like the raptors had it of some sort so i'll be very interested to see if that camera there has managed to get anything on it it's very unlikely now to attract any new predators so i might as well take the camera hopefully it'll be framed nicely and we'll have good pictures of whatever it was that was feeding on that pigeon Now unfortunately there's only enough battery life in here to turn it on so I hope the batteries haven't died before whatever it is was feeding on that pigeon was feeding on that pigeon. That was a pretty good result from both cameras this is not going to count towards the pond guru versus nature videos however because they were staged events you know even though those pigeons The pigeons that dropped out in my wood weren't intentionally shot by me. I did use them as bait to bring the wildlife in. Now in the first video we had a fox, we had the buzzard which absolutely demolished that pigeon, and we also had pheasants and I think a crow as well. So there was a reasonable amount of wildlife and a rabbit as well, just remembered that. Maybe there's a couple of rabbits in that one. But that second location that was up in the tree, that had a really good range of birds and also my cat. So in order of appearance for that one, Nuthatch. Second one was a Tree Sparrow. Now that one visited quite a few times, I had a lot of footage of that, and it was taking the feathers away, not for a nest because it's not nesting time, presumably it's taking them away for somewhere where it's roosting. It must roost in a hole somewhere and it must kind of line it out with feathers, you know, to keep himself warm. That was a nice one to see. Then there was a Great Tit, a Blue Tit. A redwing. I think the redwing was in the holly bush behind the camera, and that holly bush was a bit of a problem, which I'll mention in a minute. Then there was a wren, a starling, a robin, which seemed very interested in that corpse, and at one point it was even picking on it the meat that was there. So it's a carnivorous little devil, that one. And almost lastly, sparrowhawk. That was a male sparrowhawk, and it was a really nice specimen. And lastly was a buzzard. which didn't stay very long but it still gave us a really nice view of itself so that was a outstanding success on both cameras but there is things that i could have done differently to improve the results the first one is with that first camera it was set a little bit too far away And the distance that it was set away was very noticeable on the nighttime shots because that fox wasn't illuminated very well. That was the no glow camera and it hasn't got the range of the low glow. If I'd used the low glow it would have lit that fox up much better. Apart from the distance from the camera to the pigeon, the first one was fine. Now with the second one, although that had a hell of a lot more birds in it, a lot of the footage that I got of the sparrowhawk were of its back I must have had about an hour's worth of footage and I've just edited it down to show you, you know, just the highlights and I think that's because the pigeon was facing away from the camera. The sparrowhawk seemed to like to land on it more or less face to face. Now if I turned that pigeon around so its head was facing the camera, presumably the sparrowhawk would have landed so its head was facing the camera or if I turned it sideways we probably would have We would have got a lot of nice profile shots of the sparrowhawk. So that was something I definitely could have improved. Now with regard to the positioning of the second camera, you'd think it was pretty perfect judging by those shots. They were framed absolutely beautifully, a really lovely distance, everything was in focus, but beyond that pigeon was a big holly tree and there was a hell of a lot of birds flying in and out of there eating the berries. So the camera was more or less constantly going off. Believe it or not, I actually had thousands of photos. to sift through and hundreds of short video clips and it was purely because of all those birds in that bush setting the camera off so that was a mistake that I didn't foresee. Luckily the batteries lasted long enough to get the sparrowhawk and the buzzard. Now a couple of really strange things that I noticed about the predator behavior was that with that first pigeon the Fox went up to it sniffed it and then ignored it. I mean that would have been a good meal for the fox so I'm not sure why it did that because when the buzzard came down it just demolished it. Now with the second camera we had the sparrowhawk come down and rip it up a bit but then the buzzard came down and it never touched the pigeon. It looked at it. Saw that there was food there, and then it disappeared. Now, the camera could have missed something there. It might have missed the sparrowhawk flying in and dive-bombing the buzzard to scare it away before finishing off the meal. I don't know, but that buzzard, for all the world, looked like it was going to absolutely hammer that pigeon, and it left it, which was very, very strange. So, I've learnt something. Hopefully, you'll have learnt something. Setting these game cams isn't about having the latest, greatest gear. It's not about being in areas of the country where you're tripping over wildlife. It's purely just about understanding wildlife. And I've had a long time to study wildlife and interact with it. So I know what makes it tick. That makes it reasonably easy for me with these game cams. Sometimes the results are better than others, but if you're able to identify the tracks and signs from wildlife, And put those into a situation whereby you think something's coming here to mark its territory, something's passing through here to feed, there's a crossing point, this is where something's roosting, this is where something's feeding. It all adds up to success. So understanding wildlife is a huge part of successful photography, I suppose, with a game cam. So really what I'm hoping to do with these game cam videos is learn something more myself, Also, teach you, the viewer, the tips and tricks to spotting various likely sites to set these gamecams, get some good footage in the process, and really learn more about wildlife. I would never call myself an expert in anything, because there's always stuff to learn, and if you're willing to learn, you will learn. I hope you've enjoyed this video. I certainly enjoyed putting it together, because it was a very successful one. Um, and if you've liked it, hit the thumbs up button, share it with anybody, wherever you want, if you think they might be interested in watching it, and I'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.