12 Days of Christmas – 2022 Day 9: A Celebration of the Pine Marten A pine marten minute to enjoy. We’ve had only a few clips of the pine marten in the last couple of years. It’s always exciting to get a brief view into the mysterious world of the elusive pine marten. At one […]
12 Days of Christmas – 2022 Day 8: A day in the life of the undergrowth This is from a couple of years ago, but I still remember reviewing the footage from the SD card. 🙂 Early in the day we see a little water rail. Later in the evening the secretive pine marten comes […]
12 Days of Christmas – 2022 Day 7: Badger Wrestlers We do see badgers occasionally passing by our trail cameras. Typically they are on their way from A to B, without much to report. Occasionally, we get to see them dig for worms as they go, or even sprint off when spooked. This little exchange […]
12 Days of Christmas – 2022 Day 6: Great Tit It’s mid-April 2022, just before we open up fully and I put a camera on a dead leveret that I’d found. I was hoping for an opportunist fox, or pine marten, to visit so I could see what might happen. What I didn’t expect to […]
12 Days of Christmas – 2022 Day 5: The Irish Stoat We’ve only twice captured a stoat on our trail cameras. The first time we saw one, it was in full chase of a rat. It was all over fairly quickly (Stoat 1 : Rat 0). This time the stoat was on its own looking […]
12 Days of Christmas – 2022 Day 4: The Elusive Water Rail You can’t imagine the excitement we felt when we saw that we’d caught a water rail on one of our trail cameras. This secretive amber-listed bird is heard more often than seen (said to sound like a squealing pig at times!). We’ve been […]
12 Days of Christmas – 2022 Day 3: A Busy Redwing Loads of redwing thrushes in the Purecamping woods in Winter 20022! 🙂 A common, but welcome winter visitor from the North. Birdwatch Ireland has them favouring open fields, but our woods seem to be just as attractive. Flocks of 20 and 30 specimens seen […]
12 Days of Christmas – 2022 Day 2: A Wonderful Woodcock The fantastically camouflaged woodcock in the Purecamping woods. Talk about a beautiful bird! Check out the variety of colours in the plumage! Now with a Red conservation status in Ireland due a decline in the breeding population, yet you can shoot woodcock in Ireland […]
12 Days of Christmas – 2022 Day 1: A Solstice Fox As we enjoy our Christmas fare, spare a thought for all our wildlife. Daytime sightings of the Fantastic Mr. Fox are rare, but Winter hardship can force daylight foraging. Just think about their challenge of waking every day (or night) without knowing where the […]
A tough question in some ways, as it asks me to comment on the pastimes of some of my close neighbours and my relations. It was a question that I was prompted to ask recently when I saw a new sign posted at Querrin crossroads. It’s easy for me to condemn shooting, but at the […]
