Today we managed to renew the wire to the valley camera, it was broken in the high wind a few weeks back. I was surprised how far it is away from the Farm House, the piece of wire needing replacing was a 100m long, The camera is a good quarter of a mile away. I should think there would be a good five miles of cables around the farm making the cameras work. The camera has not been used as much as I would like because most of the interesting events are a little to far away for the IR lamps. With a bit of luck and the weather stays kind we will get a new lamp going tomorrow, that will light up the far end of the valley. I say light up, in fact with any of the lamps going, the area covered is always as dark as the night, the only indication of a lamp is when you look at it with your eyes there is a red tint on the surface.
I sometimes pan the camera around when I get a minute, now and then I show it. You tend to see a lot more Deer, if you catch them when they have just arrived you may see them grazing for up to a couple of hours, they quite often rest down the valley after grazing very close to the sheep if they are in the same field, I hope to see them with their Fawns this year, they should be showing their faces very soon. We have three types of Deer a Denbury, Red Deer that we have seen in herds of up to sixteen, believe me they go through a lot of grass in one night, you would not want that many visiting you to often, especially if it is in your hay grass. We also have Roe Deer, they are a smaller deer, I have seen small herd of six on the Farm but very often they are on their own, just recently there have been three about, twice I have seen them on the main Badger camera. The other Deer we have is the tiny Muntjac, I believe it was originally imported from China, it is no bigger than a large dog, although we do not see them that often, it is usually in the summer with a fawn.
We also see Badgers from another sett running around the field, looking for food, digging for worms and generally playing. The sheep take not notice of them at all, you can very often see them walking in between the flock. You can also see the Tawney Owl and in the summer months Bats.
We have seen the twin lambs suckling on and off all day, the Ewe is a bit more perky, so hopefully she is over the worse of her illness.