The badger project.

Over the last six months I have been working with my local badgers. This is a long-term (of and on) project where I fit in sessions with the periods I am not running a trip or when I have time from my other projects. The most recent badger work has been in my garden where I have a lone, very large male visiting every few days.

Initially when I started working with him in the garden (always after dark) I triggered the camera remotely from the house. However, brocks time keeping is a shocker, he can visit at 9pm yet on the following evening it could be as late as 4am. When I also found out that on some evenings he never showed up at all, bed time became incredibly erratic!

To combat the sleepless nights I purchased the remote camera trap gear from Camtraptions. This is an incredibly sophisticated and reliable piece of kit which I just love. Its only drawback is that the badger, when triggering the camera is usually either back on or not looking at the camera. However, since he is so laid back about the flashes (he feeds only a half metre away) he usually produces so many images on a night that there is always one or two that are good.

I have worked with brock in both the garden and in the greenhouse. One image I wanted to create was a bird’s eye view of him in the greenhouse so I strapped the camera and tripod to the beams under the roof. Another image I have been concentrating on is one including star trails. I worked out how to do this in my fungi project (the book is now at the printers and will be available at the end of Feb!).

The project will continue throughout the year as will my use of the camera trap gear, I have so many ideas where and how to use this, the only problem is that most of them would mean leaving it in places where the chances are it would get nicked sooner than later!