Over the last week or so I've been attempting to photograph my local badgers using conventional means (DSLR + telephoto lens) - the main problem being: 1) badgers are active at dusk / night, so light levels are low, 2) they are very timid so don't let you get close.
This is the closest I managed to get 'in person':
Badger - can you spot her?
Wanting to get better pictures, I cobbled together an improvised ground level webcam to see if I could get a more 'up-close and personal' perspective:
Cobbled together 'Garden-cam'
This is an unused robin nesting box, with a TP-link POE adapter and a Raspberry Pi model B with Microsoft Lifecam Studio webcam. All sourced cheaply from ebay. Connected via oudoor cat5 ethernet cable to a PC running iCatcher Console. The video stream is setup as described in this post.
I part set this up one evening last week, and left wires and components scattered about having popped in to eat - I left it on in the hope that something would wander past, and got this footage of one of my local badgers:
You can see her being a bit wary of the attached gear, but not to the point that she wont come and investigate. Later that night I stuffed all the components into the robin box to tidy things up. Since then, we have got nice views of the local wildlife as the following screen grabs show:
Passing fox: 4:30 am
Red deer fawn
Squirrel
Jay with mohican
In most of my bird boxes I've used the Microsoft LifeCam. I only recently acquired a LifeCam Studio ebay bargain - its much better in low light levels due to a bigger sensor size. It cant see in the dark, but is good for low light levels
Last Christmas my lovely wife gave me one of these:
KeepGuard KG-680V, 8MP Trailcam
For the last few weeks, I've had it set up at the bottom of my garden, which backs onto woodland. Before this point, in the garden, we've had occasional fleeting glimpses of foxes and a badger once. When I forget to close the gate, we often get deer into the garden that like to eat all the flowers.
The aim was to see if we could get footage of any of these with the trail cam...
I set it up overlooking a clear 'passageway' through an overgrown patch of land:
It has two settings: image or video capture (not both). I've set it onto its highest resolution settings, which produces some nice images and the video is okay too. It has built in IR illuminators which should illuminate up to 15m from the camera. I'm using a high capacity SD card so can afford to leave it running for a long time
To begin with I thought this could double as a way to document the local cat population, 3 regular cat visitors cats so far..
Anyway, the wild animals caught so far:
1) Deer: We seem to have two regular visitors, we've called these two "Itchy" & "Scratchy" as they spend a lot of time doing just that. There's a lot of ticks in the woods, so I wouldn't be surprised it they're covered in the things...
2) Fox: This is pretty cool - I'm keeping an eye out for more of him/her ?
3) Badger: Our favourite yet. Unfortunately my only sighting is him/her? walking away - we're hoping to get better views over the next few weeks.
All in all, I'm really pleased with the results. Not quite the 'Big 5' but there's time for a Lion yet...
The main limitation as far as I can see with my trail cam is that I need 2x SD cards so I can swop cards when reviewing footage.
Pi Trailcam
I felt quite inspired by this Raspberry Pi trailcam variant on this blog, which I might at some point consider emulating. I particularly like the sparrowhawk.
