Wild Nightlife on the Croft

The camera trap that my daughter bought me has been capturing some interesting fauna.

I set it out near the garden. We have fig trees and I thought that might attract the wild boar. We also have rats, attracted by the chicken food. But the rats have been dissapearing, so I guessed that there was a predator around. The Barn and Tawny owls capture them at night (we hear the whoosh and squeak as they attack the rats in the garden), but there are ground predators too:

My brother is a tiger, really...

Pretty sleek, eh?

Mrs Brock returns

That's from just five nights with the camera trap. The cat is big, but I guess it's a large domestic cat, not a wild cat. The fox is completely fearless: she or he has been out at times when I know the dogs were around too.

It's pretty wild at night at the Croft...

Another night

We had a cool cat stroll past the camera trap the other night. It's a Genet, Genetta genetta. Not really a cat, but very cat-like.

Look for the eyes, to the right

According to Wikipedia, the common genet was brought from the Maghreb to south west Europe as a domestic animal about 1000 to 1500 years ago. The genet is evidence of the phrase sometimes used here - 'Africa ends at the Pyrenees.'

Brock, out late

I have a new toy, thanks to my daughter. It's a camera trap. 

It takes a lot of experimentation to set it up in the right place, pointing the right way, but this week (10th July) I had my first success.

Mr Brock the Badger strolled past at 1am, and my new camera caught him:

The big challenge will be to photograph a Roe Deer like the one I saw a while ago (http://croftingcatalunya.blogspot.com.es/2017/03/deer-here.html). I'll keep trying!