For many years now we’ve suspected that our back garden is regularly visited by a fox. Actually, given that wild foxes have only a relatively short lifespan [2-5 yrs] we’d be talking about several foxes. We always put out our roast chicken carcasses and lamb shoulder bones both of which usually disappear.
I briefly toyed with the idea of a trail camera to investigate but choosing one, as is often the case, became confusing and got forgotten. This year, although we no longer to Xmas presents – I’d just as soon not do Xmas at all – Francine decided to get me [us] a trail cam. We plumped for an entry level Bushnell.
It took a while to get used to setting it up. I originally set in on “stills”, as opposed to “video”, ‘cos that’s what I’m used to and set it out over night sans bait. We caught only a neighbourhood (bloody) cat.
[It is estimated that approx. 9 million British domestic cats are responsible for some 275 million wildlife casualties every year, hence my not liking cats and hence the TIC term “bloody”.)
Lesson 1: the stills quality was utter crap. It was probably worse because the infrared flash didn’t fire (though it was set to “auto”) but the camera chose to do 1/20th sec. at F2.8 and use no flash. I’ve since tried it in the daylight and the still quality is still utter crap.
Having learned my lesson and being in possession of some suitable fox bait in the form of barbecued duck leg bones and scraps, I set the trail cam to “video” to try my luck again. I put the food out late in the hope of avoiding the (bloody) cat.
Success! We captured eleven 15s video clips in black and white [night-time is B&W, daytime is colour] of a fox snacking on our pile of duck remnants over approximately a 10-minute period. The action happened at about 00:30. As we watched foxy approaching the food, our visitor seemed to have a slight limp, favouring its left front leg.
Here’s a still clipped from one of the videos. The still quality is still crap. Still, it proves a point. 😀
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