As I thought it may, the Buzzard returned this evening, landing on the Bird Feeders ready to swoop on an unsuspecting Rabbit. The way that it flew down shortly after landing, it could well have caught one. That particular feeder is a good vantage point to face the camera. You can regularly see Rabbit and Pheasants in the background. For the past couple of days a Fox has been turning up in the morning, eating the sunflower hearts, that I scatter around the path to encourage the Pheasants, so that they are able to be seen on the camera.
For the past two or three days, the Fish in the lake has been spawning. I managed to catch a few of them on camera this morning. It seemed a bit frenzied, with what seemed like quite a lot of males chasing a female, trying to fertilize her eggs. When I walked around the Lake a little later, there were a lot of Fish in the reeds by the bank of the lake, spawning in the shallow water. It is when spawning in shallow water that the fish are vulnerable to the Herons. The Heron will not be able to eat the large Fish, but will pierce the Fish, that causes injuries and can kill the fish.. Needless to say that Herons are not my favorite bird.
I forgot to mention, that whilst we were at The Somerset Wildlife Trusts, Fyne Court site we heard our first Cuckoo. We have not heard any on the farm this year, I should think that by now if there had been any, we would have heard them by now. We also have not heard or seen any Tawney Owls for a while. We have two Tawney Owl nest boxes down the valley. You may have wondered if you have watched the valley camera, why I sometimes scan the trees on the left side. Very often last year I would catch the Owls eyes in the infra red lights. A number of those watching the Badger Camera last year, also saw a Tawney Owl swoop down to catch a Rat or Vole. I am sure if any of you had seen it recently, you would have posted it on the forum.
I managed to get the Telescope into the Observatory earlier in the week, today I have started to put the bits and pieces on that make it turn automatically. There is also the smaller Telescope and Solar Telescope to fit. The Moon is about at the moment, if I get the Telescope ready I will show it on camera. With the weather forecast that I heard tonight, it may not be until next week.
I managed to speak to a person who manages the wildlife, for one of the organisations that we are hoping to host their web cams, on the WBC site. We are going to discuss it further tomorrow. All I can say at the moment is that it looks promising. I also spoke to the other site last week. We are going to speak further in a couple of weeks time. They are interested, but they have a couple of issues that need to be discussed internally