Photographing Garden Wildlife at Night

Some still photos, and short video clips, of wildlife in my garden, mainly taken at night.

The BBC program Lost Land of The Tiger, which was televised two weeks ago, showed some remarkable footage of rare cats that had been filmed in the foothills of the Himalayas.

The extraordinary images had been made possible by small remote digital cameras.

These cameras detect motion just like a burglar alarm, and take a still photo, or short video, whenever something passes by. The cameras will operate in both daylight and darkness.

The image at the right is a screenshot from the program. It shows Alan Rabinowitz fixing one of these cameras to a post, along a path suspected of being used by animals.

I made a few simple enquires, and found that very similar cameras are available for home use, and are not too expensive. These are advertised as being ideal presents for wildlife enthousiasts.

There is a huge variety of such cameras available from Amazon US, but only a very small number available from Amazon UK. So I actually decided to buy one, over the internet, from a specialist game hunting supplier in the UK, who had a larger selection than Amazon UK.

I've only had the camera for a few days.

The camera comes with some straps, and is designed to be strapped to a tree.

However, I decided to mount mine on a tripod, so that I can move it anywhere in the garden.










The first night was something of a trial, just to see if the camera would work. But I was still very pleased to get these images of a fox. He hadn't seen the camera, on his nightly stroll before, and was clearly very curious about this funny thing on stilts.

The camera will take either video footage, or still images. On the second night I tried taking still images. I got some more photos of the fox, a snap of a hedegehog, and one of a deer eating a fallen apple.

Taking a photo of a black Hugo, on a black night, is unlikely to produce a wonderful photo.

Bambi is a little more photogenic.







I thought that I might be able to provide my visitors with more posing opportunities if I put out some more food.

I thought the fox might fancy some chicken in gravy, with dog biscuits. I'd also read that hedgehogs like peanut butter on bread, so I got some peanut butter too.

I also sprinkled the ground with peanuts, and a few crushed fallen apples.

And provided a little bowl of water. I'm sure my guests will be thirsty.

This is the table, set out, awaiting its guests.




The fox turned up again, and, yes, he definitely approves of chicken and biscuits...

 This is a still image, taken from a video clip that was filmed a little while later.

It shows two sets of head-lights. There's not much more to see on the video, other than these two sets of lights moving from side to side.





This is a brief clip of a deer passing through, taken a little later...

But the big surprise of the night was an unexpected visitor. I've never seen this animal in my garden before...

During daylight hours, the camera automatically switches to colour.

This was a squirel that turned up on the morning after.

I don't know how long I'm going to keep it a secret, from him and his mates, that free peanuts are on offer.



I had no idea that badgers might be living in my garden. I've often found small pieces of grass torn up, and occasionally, small holes excavated in the garden, but I'd always believed that activity was caused by foxes.

On investigation I found some tracks, through long grass. The grass along the track is flattened down and looks exactly as if a sack of potatoes has been dragged through the grass. I'm reasonably confident that this is a badger track.

It leads to a bramble bush. I don't know whether the badger lives beneath the bramble bush, or somewhere beyond.