Tuesday 1/9/09 - More pictures tonight

After the attempts to take photographs last night I have decided to try my daughters Nikon Coolpix as a quieter option to the SLR. This is a very compact little camera, but it takes some nice shots. Also, and most importantly, once you have turned off all the little noises these modern cameras make for focusing, shutter sound, etc, they are pretty quite. No loud clunk as the shutter fires.

Beth comes along with me tonight. I don't think she trusts me with her camera! With school about to start plus a trip to Spain starting on Friday, this will be the last night she can attend for a while. We arrive at the hide a little later than planned and almost dark again. We put the food out and begin the wait. It's not a long wait and a badger shows up. He works his way towards us and I get the camera ready. I take a shot and the flash goes off. No reaction! This is exciting, badgers turning up just after we arrive and now a second badger. We sit quietly watching the feeding animals. Here is one of the shots I managed to take early on. You can see the badgers look to be in great condition.
The badgers move in close to the hide and as I attempt to take some more images, a couple of times the animals spooked and ran a few metres away. They don't go far and I guess the flash is startling them somewhat, the same it does to us when we have a picture taken when we're not expecting it. They come back pretty quickly, though, so I risk a couple more shots.  The picture on the right is a cropped image of one of the regulars, I think. I still find it difficult to tell them apart, but having looked at some pictures I've now taken, it seems as though their nose colour, or the area just above the nose varies slightly. Perhaps this is just me, but is may be one way of telling one from the others. Has anyone else noted this? Let me know.

Anyway, the two badgers feed confidently and eventually they are right outside the hide. Due to the disturbance of the flash, I stop taking pictures and just sit and watch. The badgers finish off the nuts and dogfood and are now sniffing around looking for any that they've missed. As I've mentioned before, I began whistling at the badgers a while back now and they don't even look up when I do this. I've also started to throw a small number of peanuts out when they are running out and as long as the badgers don't see the movement of my are, they home in on them pretty quickly, possibly by the noise of them landing. What if I do these two things together? Would the badgers begin to associate my whistle with more food being available? This has got to be worth a try and is basic animal training at the end of the day, so why not?

1 comment:

  1. Superb close-up picture - well done. Very nice indeed!

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