I only managed to get out of the house at about 5pm this evening, when I took a walk up into the wood behind the property, which is owned by our immediate neighbour. Last summer I had spent an amazing evening there waiting to see if I could see any badgers. There’s a badger sett and I was lucky enough to see several of them, plus some young foxes. And to cap a great evening on the walk back to the house I heard the call of a quail in the field next to the wood – the first time I had ever heard one in the UK!
But that was all back in 2022!
This evening I took the thermal camera with me, but apart from getting very cold I only saw crows! However there’s something about being in a wood at dusk as the light goes and the sky slowly changes colour. At first you can see everything, and then there’s the point where your eyes start playing tricks and shapes that you know are really tree stumps of branches suddenly seem to become animals or birds…..and finally everything takes on a different dimension as darkness takes hold.
For me going out in search of badgers also has a special nostalgia as my Dad took me badger watching a few times as a teenager, and some of those memories remain very clear. So no luck tonight, but I’m hopeful of badgers later this year.
No new species for February 21st:
TOTALS TO DATE:
Birds = 129
Moths = 4
Wildflowers = 19