It has been ages since I did an update on the foxes and badgers, so last night I set up the front garden infra-red camera and captured some film overnight. I’m pleased to report that everyone seems to be fit and healthy!

One of the foxes from last night
First we have the foxes. There were at least two in the garden. Both looked very fit (no mange) and have put on quite a bit of weight over the summer. I’ve been trying to ID them and I think they must be the two youngsters from last year.
They kept trip

At last - this week the sun has appeared and with it a load of different insects have descended on my garden. Bees, butterflies and hover-flies of all types are now busy buzzing round the flowers. However, this afternoon we had an unexpected but seemingly-friendly visitor.

Female Southern Hawker Dragonfly
I’d been trying to film grasshoppers in the “top meadow”. I say meadow, it’s really just a small patch of uncut grass with a few wildflowers. Anyway, I was lugging my lump of a camera and tripod b

So they made it through the night. With all that rain and wind I did wonder whether the two little chicks would be ok, but they were still waving their little beaks around begging for food at 7am this morning…. except now there were three!

The picture above shows Mum feeding the youngsters this morning
The pair have been flying backwards and forwards all day catching flies of differing sizes and types for the kids. It’s hard to know what they all are but I’m expecting hoverflies, wasps and mozzie

My Nature Watch Corfe Mullen project moved into top gear this week with the first of our local Wildlife Events, a Nightjar & Glow-worm Twilight Wander on Barrow Hills, but did we see any? wander over to the website and read the event report for the full low-down of the evening. The second exciting thing that has happened this weekend is the hatching of my spotted flycatcher chicks.

Here you can see the proud parents having a bit of a shouting match at 9.45am this morning. Maybe they knew that something wa

Lying in bed yesterday morning half asleep Andrew (husband) suddenly said to me “what’s that bird on the telephone line?”. I have to admit I couldn’t believe my eyes. There on the line sat a small, perky little spotted flycatcher. Then she was gone. But where?

I raced into the office (only two rooms away) turned on the flycatcher nestbox camera and low and behold there it was sitting on the edge of the nestbox! For the rest of the morning I watched as the pair flew backwards and forwards taking ne

Last Sunday I spent the evening watching badgers in deepest-darkest Dorset.
The farmer who owns this land has set up a hide for people who want to watch the badgers. He also puts some very tempting peanuts down for them! Every night they come out of their sett and wander down to the peanut-field in front of the hide.
It was wet, cold and generally a bit rubbish for badgers…. but we were lucky.
We ended up seeing three badgers. The footage is pretty “damp” looking (as it̵...

LIVE during the day watching the Spotted Flycatcher nest and in the evenings to "fox watch". I apologise if the webcam is offline when you visit. Come back again and hopefully it will be live!

Not videoed by me (unfortunately) but a wonderful video of a fox having a lovely time on a trampoline. By the way, I have no idea what the big "ball" is...

On 20th April approx 16 members of the Dorset Badger Group went to Badger Watch Dorset, where you can sit in the comfort of a warm hide and watch wild badgers come out of a natural sett and feed right in front of you.

It was a wet evening (so the badgers look a bit wet and bedraggled) and the windows of the hide were furred up and wet.

Hopefully you can get some idea of how beautiful these creat

As you know, I regularly film the garden foxes at night using the infra-red camera. There seem to be at least four visitors at the moment, and the other night I filmed some really cute behaviour that I’d never seen before.

The vixen and one of last years cubs
Before you watch the footage I’ll explain a bit about the foxes. The vixen has now got to the point where she can leave her cubs and comes looking for her own food. She was absent for a couple of weeks (just after the birth ...

The birds in my garden are really important to me. Before we moved to this house the previous owner had fed the birds for over 40 years. There was no way I was going to stop, there might have been an “urban extension” bird-riot.

Male Bullfinch
We’ve got a lot of tits in the garden at the moment. Not the double-d variety (although I’m sure my other half would like that), these are the feathery kind. The fab-four are blue tits, coal tits, long tailed tits and great tits...

I haven’t updated you lately on the regular visitors to my garden, so if you have been wondering about them here’s what’s been going on.

Having a drink before passing through
The Badger
Apple (sorry, I can’t just call her “badger”) has been visiting regularly, as you’ve probably noticed from my “diary notes” over previous days. She always seems to visit when it’s been dry for at least a couple of days, so I’m wondering if she ...

The badger, Apple, made a short and sweet “walk through” visit early this morning at 2.56am squatting to leave a scent mark as she walked! No food left for her so she kept on going. First time I’ve seen her since the two days of snow on the 6 and 7 April. Dry last night and slightly warmer, but still a frost.
For anyone who has been wondering, I’ve been trying to keep these diary notes about the badger so that I could spot some kind of link between the times it visits,...

I can’t begin to explain how tired I am tonight. It’s a long time since I’ve been this knackered. So where have I been? Absolutely nowhere. Today, with the sun shining and the birds singing I decided to stay in my own garden.

Common toad in my garden

For a while now I’ve been thinking about demolishing an old rockery. Well today was “the day”. Out came my trusty pick-axe, spade, wheelbarrow and gardening gloves and off I went. Six hours later (yes, six h...

Badger caught on the infra-red night camera in my garden

Filmed using infra-red in the night, foxes having a sit-down picnic under our magnolia tree. Think this is an adult male and female youngster.

Filmed in March 2008. The first film I've managed to get in colour of the nightly visitors!

A very clever crow!