A Heron, a Roe Deer and a Kestrel
Posted: 23 May 2022
Notable this week was a sequence of clips of a heron that were captured. I have put them in a short video of their own as, to many, the seven minute video may appear as interesting as watching paint dry. In the second video the clips include a Roe Deer, the first to be seen crossing the bridge and a kestrel.
The event with the heron happened on Tuesday morning, 17 May, starting at 10:04. After the minute of filming that the camera is set to record the video fades to one that was triggered at 10:21. I have to assume that there was so little motion in between that the camera was not triggered until it detected the lifting of the bird's wings.
There are similar pauses between the following clips but much shorter. The next clip was triggered at 10:24 and then at 10:33, 10:35, 10:42 and 10:55. Finally, at 10:57, the bird walks off the bridge and out of frame.
The first 40 seconds shows two successive clip captured a minute apart later on the 17 May. Its main interest is that in the second a third Muntjac arrives on the scene.
That is followed by a clip, captured on Thursday 19 May at 10:05, of a squirrel that disappears under the bridge for a prolonged period.
That is followed by two firsts. There's the arrival and departure of a kestrel, captured at 10:01 on Saturday 21 May and, at 05:34, on the Sunday morning, a Roe Deer is seen crossing the bridge. The camera didn't record its arrival onto the Ruston House grounds of the deer, so it must be assumed it jumped or waded across one of the dykes that surround our grounds. As with Munjac the Roe is seen to find the bridge a little difficult to negotiate. As its last hoof leaves the bridge it is seen to slide on the planed wood surface of the bridge deck.
Later on the Sunday, at 11:31 we find a sequence of clips that show the Canada goose family that hatched in the nest on the island in a foraging expedition beside the bridge.
The video concludes with a scene you might wish to run several times as, perhaps, its most interesting part happens in the first half second. It appears to show a squirrel diving for cover as a kestrel flies overhead. Maybe it was a similar incident that caused a squirrel to shake its tail in the video in the video uploaded on 9 May.
