Sunday 21 June 2015

Badgers

It has been a little while since my last post, I have been busy marking exams papers for OCR. It was hard work but someone had to do it and the money was good... it did highlight some aspects of childrens understanding of the natural world which I will explore in more detail in a later blog post. I am just formulating my ideas.

As soon as my allocation of papers was completed I turned my attention back to my trail camera data and have started to analyse the Badger data I have collected. I am currently in the process of writing up a short report on it but wanted to share with you some of the findings.

First off a short set of clips showing elements of behaviour I have recorded.


Next up is the main graph showing the amount of activity over the year. This graph indicates the number of records of  badgers in 10 minute blocks (June - June).


The graph shows a pronounced peak in February. This coincides with one of my earlier blog posts it illustrates a spike in activity occurring around the time when new cubs are born underground. It is my supposition that the adults are stirred into action and patrol the territories boundaries more to ensure the territory is safe and secure.

I have also done some analyses into the duration of activity in the season. You must bear in mind that the camera is located on a transit path running along a boundary to a terminal latrine pit and not at the sett itself.



The graphs show lower activity in Autumn and pronounced activity in the spring. Surprisingly winter is active with the longest period of activity.

I hope to complete the report this week and will post it here when I do.


Sunday 7 June 2015

Happy Birthday Trail Cam

It has now been a full year that my trail cam has been situated on the beech tree on my patch and what a year it has been.

It has been running 24/7 in that time with occasional breaks where the camera batteries died or I forgot to switch it back on when swapping out the camera card. Over the year the camera didn't record for 7 of the 52 weeks and in total was active for 7476 hours.

Its too early to give you a full analysis of my findings but I can give you a quick run down of facts.

In the 7476 hours the camera recorded the following animal activation's:

139 Badgers

225 Foxes

127 Muntjac

616 Grey Squirrel

354 Wood Mice

Several Brown Rats

1 Polecat !!!!!

And the following birds:
Robin
Dunnock
Great Tit
Magpie
Blackbird
Song Thrush
Pheasant
Woodpigeon
Wren
Chaffinch
Jay


Below are the up to date graphs of abundance, I will go over these in greater detail once I have had time to analyse the data but its because fairly clear that there are patterns evident I thought I would let everyone have a look.