Rural Life

Fire!

This could be yet another post about the heatwave that has dogged us since June, and with daytime high temperatures never less than 30ºC until today, it could also be quite accurate.  But no, today's edition is firmly dedicated to the real fire that has occupied most of our senses for nearly a week now. 

n Monday we went to Terra Botanica near Angers to enjoy a bit of "us" time and celebrate the day.  We got there just after opening, planning to leave at about 3pm before the heat got too much for us.  Once our noses were turned in a homeward direction (slightly North East), we thought that the sky looked a bit murky - on a day when it was pretty solidly blue!  Once off the motorway, we decided that it wasn't cloud, it was smoke and spent a happy few kilometres guessing which bit of woodland downwind from us it was.  All too soon it became clear that it was woodland to the North East of us, and that wasn't happy news!  This is our first clear view.

We could also smell it.  Once home, social media provided all the gossip we needed to know that it was a serious fire, that it was too close to some friends for comfort and that it wasn't going to be sorted quickly.  A late evening chat with the grandson of our neighbours gave a hint as to the number of fire fighters being called in and the distances.  The following morning, the house stank of smoke - the windows were open overnight to allow us to cool the house down.  The pall of smoke hung over the village and the rumour mill was running big time.  A  hairdresser's appointment was a brilliant way for me to pick up on the scale of what was going on, although very sad to hear that my hairdresser had had to send her children and animals away to stay with her parents, so that they weren't too badly affected.  The evening view of the smoke was dramatic!

There are lots of issues with social media, but in this instance, it did show its value too.  The local authority and local community group pages were kept updated on the facts, stopping rumours about masked bands of arsonists, and flights of fancy about hunters, while showing the scale of the fire and the damage.  More constructively, there were also threads on how to offer help, food, goods, the use of horse boxes and cattle trucks, and how staying away was just as useful.  A thread at 10pm on Tuesday night, asking for mattresses for the firefighters that had come vast distances to help, prompted a magnificent display, such that the 200 required were provided within half an hour.  Maps, satellite views and overlays demonstrated the scale of the problem.

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Visiting the Boys in the Country, downwind of the fire, to make sure they were OK and that they were well fed and watered brought a whole new set of panic to us.  We found a t-shirt I had left out to dry covered in ash, pieces of pine bark charred from the fire littered the Garden, and a singed oak leaf was by the building.  We had a mass of activity ensuring that combustibles were moved away from the building and put a few buckets of water on the roof in case, but fortunately no more cinder storms happened.

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We have done our bit by staying away from the fire and the exclusion zone that has been put in place around it until Tuesday next week.  We did learn a whole new jargon for wildfire fighting including the important difference between fixé, or contained and maitrisé or controlled, while that nirvana of éteint or out is still a long way off.  The fire ripped through pine forest and mixed forest, and pine is a real danger in these circumstances, with resinous cores that can keep burning quietly until an unfavourable wind hits.  Parts of the area are peat based, which also keeps burning underground unless there is a really solid dousing, and means that the fire can pop up again when it finds a nice pine root and a bit of wind.  It will be weeks until they are convinced that it is fully out.  This aerial photo from the paper shows a tiny part of the damaged area.

Overall some 1,450 hectares have burned and the perimeter of the fire is 21 kilometres.  At its height 90 people were evacuated from their homes (not including those that chose to leave in case), but thanks to amazing work by firefighters supported by some 90 farmers as well as hundreds of volunteers, the local councillors and staff, no homes or buildings were destroyed, and there were only two injuries, both to firefighters (one hurt their arm, one inhaled smoke).  A friend with bees lost only one hive out of 200 or more.  But the damage and the desolation will take a long time to repair - Mother Nature has her work cut out again.  The exclusion zone is shown here - the purple line.

While at the height of the fire there were over 100 engines, over 400 firefighters, 3 Dash aircraft (they land to refill their water tanks but can drop fire retardant products), and the local farmers with water tanks working away, numbers have reduced.  I think we are now down to 50 or so firefighters and some very fine fire engines (yesterday, parked up while people rested and had a bite to eat).  The smell of fire has gone too, damped down by last night's rain.

Thanks to all those who worked tirelessly and selflessly.  I hope their efforts are never needed again round here in this way.

 

Weather obsessions and other summer thoughts

The acquisition of a couple of beach style chairs gives us an opportunity to sit and gaze through the gap in the hedge/overgrowth/trees towards the far hill and its path, and let our minds wander.  Sitting in the shade and gazing into the distance is one way, after all, of passing time on these endless hot, sunny days.  Records are falling for heat, lack of rain, lack of water, size of cracks in the ground and buildings, crops being early and crops being poor.  While the early cereal crops exceeded expectations in quality and sometimes quantity too, the later ones will be poor, and where the farmer has followed the rules and played the game, exceptionally poor.  Any hint of rain is fallen up as a good sign, such as this week, with clouds to the west giving us a vivid sunset, hopes only to be dashed the following morning with just 0.3mm of rain in the gauge - not enough to even change the soil colour on our "lawn".  Perhaps one different signal is that while the first cyclamen flowers are coming up, they are a good three weeks later than last year!

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Even in this heat, the show must go on, particularly in the more touristy towns and villages.  This weekend, Chinon held its mediaeval fair (probably fayre, but I object to that), with some celebration of Joan of Arc, who manifested her first miracle in the chateau at Chinon.  I wouldn't have wanted to be Didier in all this finery yesterday!

Over in the Country, two of the cats momentarily decided that 31ºC was not too hot to cuddle up on one of the garden chairs, while watching me eeking out the stored rainwater on the aubergines.  I found another, probably more helpful, garden buddy, when I went walking to beat the bounds, in the form of a rather magnificent slow worm.  He (or she) was about a foot long and definitively basking in the late afternoon sun!

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The trail camera is installed at a secret location, to monitor what is making a mess of someone's garden.  In order to prepare it for a professional job, we recharged the batteries and I cleared the SD card, which hadn't been done since April.  My word there was a lot of material on there - nearly 400 videos and 400 photos.  Now while some included my fat bottom walking away after doing my WiFi checks (instantly deleted), some included John passing with various mowing machines (bizarrely I kept a couple of those), and many seem to have been triggered by a gust of wind or a fly landing on the lens, there was an awful lot that wasn't.   When I do my remote WiFi checks, I use my phone to review potentially interesting things and download them, but if the sun is in the wrong place, I don't have reading glasses with me, or there are a lot of files since my previous visit, I don't get the full richness of what has been happening.

Today I therefore offer up some links to videos that are interesting or a bit special in some way - I hope you enjoy them.

First off - there seem to be more jays around this year than previously, no idea why.  Here is a video.

I found more videos of the young wild boar, actually quite a few, but this one is rather sweet and gives a good close up of young Stripy.

Perhaps rashly, I accused the boar of attacking and knocking over the log the camera was attached to.  Reviewing one of these two videos of the pine martin, I need more evidence before deciding on the culprit.

 

I know they are small, but they have no respect!

Probably the star of the trail camera recently has been our family of deer, and in particular the one we think of as "our" faun.  Every few days, with his mother, they would spend a couple of days lurking near the camera, before moving on to find fresh grazing; then coming back.  The first video is a solo venture, the second includes Mum, while I'm not sure how many deer there are in the final one - best watched full screen and to the end!

 

 

Next weekend "they" promise rain, in which case I will sort out more gems from the deer family and the boar family and perhaps a badger or two as well.  Have a good week!

 

Change and new beginings

I'm not sure how much I am in favour of change - but I am sure it will happen whether I like it or not.  This year is one of farewells - some French friends moving south, some moving village, and British friends, tired of the challenges of Brexit, selling their second homes and settling full time (or an approximation of full time) in the UK.  They all say they will come back and visit, how many do, and how often remains to be seen. 

While the removals take place, there is the frisson of having a trailer that can be used for trips to the dump.  We also pick over the spoils of what won't be taken away, what is no longer needed or is too expensive to take "home" (there really is no Brexit benefit).  A local cat charity now has more pillows, towels and duvets than they could dream of.  Someone else has a 'new to them' sofa.  We have a bunch of things to put on sales sites to share around, and the awful process of triaging much loved libraries of second hand books to see what can be slipped into book swap kiosks, what might sell for a few centimes, what could be given to hospital libraries, and what, with the best will in the world, is best sent for pulping (Thomas Mann in the original is high on that list!).  How many copies of the RHS Encyclopaedia of Gardening does one need - purely rhetorical!

But that excitement declines very rapidly, as we try to find a bit of cupboard space for 6 tins of chickpeas, and regret the company, the laughter, the trips and events that will no longer animate the summer months.  We would prefer to keep the people to all the books, sofas, DVDs and chickpeas.

The moving stuff around this week has meant that we have also been out and about a bit.  Did you know that as well as building a tower in Paris, Eiffel also built a railway bridge in Chinon (OK it is a long way in the distance)?  You can also see that the river is chronically low.

We also visited the village church at Gée, just 15 kilometres away - it has been very well restored, presumably a nice legacy from someone.  The village also has a very good restaurant that does a very fine 15€ lunch!

I don't know if I should blame the cats for this, but I had a chance to take a very close look at one of my favourite moths - the tiger moth.  With their wings at rest, they are handsome and sober, but when they are in flight or when you look at the underside, they are the most marvellous and vibrant orange.

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It is still stinking hot and dry as a bone here - water restrictions are incredibly tight.  You can only water food plants, anything else has to take its chance unless you use grey water from doing something else.  Even watering food plants is frowned on between 8am and 8pm, and should ideally only be done with grey water or rain water that you have stored.  We are down to our last 800 litres of stored water, and while there was a promise of rain and thunder for Thursday on the weather sites yesterday, it has now been downgraded to a 20% chance of mild drizzle.  The sweetcorn hasn't worked and has been sacrificed for aubergines, butternuts and borlotti beans, while the chillies are doing well on the water that the chickens don't drink in a day.

The fact that there are cool shady corners and a bit of water/bog at the bottom of the Wildflower Meadow means that the trail camera has been working hard.  I did accuse John of knocking it over with a mower when he cleared the paths, but looking at footage from the camera, I then had to apologise.  The camera is on the move to a distant site where someone wants to know what is causing trouble, so I will be spending a lot of time clearing the SD card, but these videos were downloaded by phone and show that new beginings are possible.  I am pretty sure the faun was born in the meadow, and I may even have footage of the labour/birth when I go through the hundreds of files.  Anyway, enjoy these and see who you think pushed over the camera on its log!

Looking at that more closely, I think the young buck has a problem with one foot/leg.

This is the only time I have seen one here, and it is also surprising to see it in daylight.

He didn't really go far for a couple of weeks, and stayed with Mum in the zone in that time.

He (or she) really is rather cute!

Well, I know who my money's on!

Have a good week!

 

Surviving the heat - just about

Well, I have to say that temperatures over 40ºC are just awful.  Monday was the killer day, although Tuesday was still jolly hot.  By just after breakfast, it was already over 30ºC and just kept climbing.  We had to go out to a meeting in the afternoon (fortunately somewhere that was air conditioned), and just the few kilometres in the car (with the air con on) were nearly unbearable and with the air con, extremely expensive in fuel too.  It didn't get down to 33ºC until well after 9pm, when we sat out for a bit but not for long.  In town, the two pharmacies agreed it was over 40, but couldn't decide if it was 42, 43 or 44.  Any were too hot!

The following morning I went to The Garden to check on the boy cats and see the damage to the potagers.  The cats were fine, but very pleased to have gravy.  As for the plants?  Well I was pretty convinced we had lost at least 2 of the butternut plants, half the chillies, half of the leeks, and some of the beans.  Some plants had just rejected the fruits they were carrying, so the five set butternuts were yellow and gone, the courgettes had no viable female flowers, and the aubergines had no flowers full stop.

Nature is amazing though - among the photos below taken today, there are aubergines ready to be picked, flourishing borlotti beans, a newly set butternut, some small chard seedlings that survived and are pulling away, the parsnips that survived (2 didn't make it), and a chilli set on a different but equally abused plant.  The leeks are flourishing too.  Sadly the sweetcorn has been provoked into flowering too soon and too short to produce much of interest, but hey!

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How did the wildlife survive the heat?  OK as far as we can tell - there is evidence that the resident doe and faun made it through and in fact the faun looks pretty healthy to my eye.  The local buzzards are making a lot of noise as are the wood peckers.  There are no obvious corpses - I think they just head for cover and wait until it's over.

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It's the opera season in Baugé, so I must cut this short and do a bit of ironing before making salads for the interval picnic (it's a Glyndebourne style opera festival), but this week has seen a notable anniversary.  It is five years since Zola's Gotcha Day - to celebrate she rolled around on hedgehog pee for a happy 5 minutes.

Until next week!

 

Mediaeval madness and new critters

I am now officially Covid free, so have been able to enjoy fun and games at the Fête Medievale in our village, celebrating the 600th (well actually 601st, but last year wasn't doable) anniversary of the battle of Vieil Baugé, turning point of the Hundred Years War, and the first major defeat of the English.  The French were helped by boggy ground and Scottish mercenaries.  There is a small military encampment, there is a jousting tournament, there are sword fights, there were demonstrations of horsemanship, fireworks, a 10 pig roast banquet, a fair, and trebuchets.  They were firing trebuchets and my word that is fun - a video next week perhaps!

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A friend of ours who makes clogs as a hobby (well, it is in his family history, and he enjoys it, and it is harmless enough) was demonstrating his craft and had a load of his wares for sale.

It is very hot and dry at the moment, so I was surprised to find Mr Tiggiewinkle wandering the garden after midnight last night, until I realised there was a bowl of water out for the cats, which could well have attracted him.  The cheese rinds we threw for the chickens may also have been appealing if the chickens didn't eat them all - some chance!

On the trail camera, there is a lot of deer action still, including this nice still of the doe and her fawn.  There was also a new face on the camera - I need to check if it is a pole cat or a pine martin.  Whichever it is, lovely to see, and I'm so glad we don't have chickens round there!

 

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That's all for today, but I may update during the week.

 

Variety is good

What a varied week!  Last Sunday was Trout Fishing Sunday in Vieil Baugé, organised by a fishing group and the Comité des Fêtes.  There were perhaps 80 rods, and most seemed to go away happy with a catch or three.  The fishing group also provided baguettes with pork belly or sausages or paté (strictly carnivore!), while the Comité des Fêtes, with whom we volunteer from time to time, ensured that no one got dehydrated through lack of access to beverages.  Some may have got dehydrated from the volume of red and rosé wine consumed, or beer, but that was their own look out!

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We have picked all, and eaten most, of the broad beans so today it was all change in the vegetable garden.  The Aldi aubergines are doing OK, so two had their plastic cloches removed as they had grown too big.  The Year 2 potato bed now has aubergines, butternut squash, cabbages, parsnips, sweetcorn, haricot beans and radishes sown or growing in it.  Elsewhere we have mangetout peas, more butternuts, courgettes, garlic, shallots, onions and parsley.  The last crop to go in will be next weekend, when we sow the borlotti beans, which need nice warm soil to germinate.  Our learning so far this year is that sunshine doesn't always mean warm soil, and gardening on a slope is "interesting".

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The trail camera is doing sterling work as a log camera, and things are taking less notice of it, and carrying on in their daily life.  There are videos this week, but one thing that was captured as a photo only was a passing hare.  This animal terrifies the largest of the garden cats, and a full grown hare is indeed a large animal.  This is the best the camera could do.

So, on to the videos.  There are four for you this week.  One is an atmospheric - well, let's face it, blurred - view of a deer passing through in the morning, when the dew settles nicely on the lens.  There is night time feeding by deer and by badgers, and the boar are back, this time with a darling little piglet, which moves very quickly.

 

 

 

 

My homage to the Cannes film festival!!  Have a good week!

 

Heatwave and drought

It's broadly official now, with 40 days at over the seasonal average temperature, and pretty well no rainfall since early April - it's a heatwave and it's a drought.  There are water restrictions and even the farmers are mostly complying with them.  Lawns look parched unless overhung by willow trees, in which case they are lush and green and long.  Anywhere else and they are turning yellow or brown, apart from the weed flowers which happily rise above it all.  I think the drought conditions have really done for the bee orchids this year - there were so many rosettes in the winter and early spring, but not enough moisture to let them push up flower spikes.  Those that there are, seem a bit stunted to me too.

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Temperatures have gone over 30ºC a fair number of times in the last two weeks, and while we can strip down to shorts and skimpy t-shirts, the cats can't.  They are doing a good effort of shedding fur whenever we touch them, and actually as desert animals probably cope a bit better than us in the heat, but they are seeking comfy places to sleep this out.

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The plants are doing their best, with late evening watering for things in pots.  The butternut seedlings are ready to go out I think/hope.  They seem big enough to cope with being nibbled by any snails mad enough to break hibernation seals and come out and about.  The chilli seeds are coming up - given the weather, they might seem a bit late, but we are only 3 weeks into May and are actually on the early side.  The cheap rose I bought at Aldi shrugged off the greenfly, after judicious application of soapy water, and is now in flower, while the single red hot poker that I have nurtured in a pot, ready to plant elsewhere, is now out.  Another bit of colour, this time by the front door, comes from the pinks we got at Jacques Briant, and I finally potted on into something sensible a couple of weeks ago.

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The trail camera has moved - after getting 500 photos and 500 short videos of moving grass seed heads, it was clearly time for a change.  Currently I am trying it at a sort of crossroads between the Orchard and the Meadow, and as there are no handy trees or fencing poles there, I have it on a piece of willow log, rescued from a work site.  I only managed to check it once before today, and have evidence that it has been investigated by the badger family!

This week's blog is early.  The weather today is hot, so we aren't going to feed the cats and put water around until a bit later.  Tomorrow (Sunday) we are spending from midday or so, helping out on the beer and sandwich stand at the village trout fishing day.  Next week I hope there will be lots of jolly photos from the event, but I know I won't be in a fit condition to sit in front of a computer and write about it tomorrow evening.  I expect my ankles to be the size of footballs!

 

Sunshine and badgers

Happy May Day - and apologies to those in the UK as I gather the weather isn't too great - here it is lovely and has been for a while.  Sunshine, gentle cooling breezes and blue skies, which of course also means hosepipe bans and water restrictions.  It is the earliest I remember there being a ban on watering non-essentials using well or tap water.  Fortunately we have stocks of rainwater, and vainly hope that it will rain sometime soon - the earliest forecast is for around the 13th May!!

The sunshine does mean that there are some lovely things to photograph at the moment - distant chateau before they disappear behind foliage, but are nicely framed by green, orchids (although the bee orchid season will start soon and I'm sure that will get boring), lizards, butterflies, tadpoles and a vide grenier (literally empty your attic - the French version of a car boot, and all day affairs).

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The wildflower meadow is really coming into its own, with oxeye daisies, linseed, and bright pink clover - the bee orchids will join in shortly as they seem to go well alongside the clovers.  We mowed a trail round, so that you can walk round without worrying about treading on something precious or getting too many ticks on your clothes, as the hares and deer also like the meadow.  You can't take a decent photo of a wildflower meadow really, as the camera can't work as well as the eye for taking it all in.  By contrast, I show an area by the fruit trees where we haven't mown, and nature is springing back with all the "best" things in life - nettles, mares tail and bramble.

We now have aubergines planted out under individual mini-cloches and some lettuce under protection from cat bums - I am hoping the resident thrushes will do the needful with slugs and snails as I found this year's well used anvil.

Anyway, I also said something about badgers.  We moved the trail camera to near the set in the hope of getting a sight of cubs at dawn or dusk.  For the first few days there was no action at all.  Then a couple of days ago I checked and there were lots of files, although on my phone they didn't look like much - but I downloaded a few photographs and a couple of videos anyway.  Away from sunlight and with a pair of glasses, I could see there was actually quite a bit of action, so today I downloaded a further random selection and there is quite a lot of activity.  The following five short films show the hunt for food as young cubs need sustenance, all done at night.

 

 

 

And finally...

Have a good week!

 

 

Four seasons in a week!

Last week I complained of frost and we had more of it too.  Now people get very upset by sharp frosts and imagine the worst and want to remove anything that might have been affected as soon as possible.  I find it is worth waiting a bit.  While we know that there will be no early season figs - the hint is that the tiny fruits and the leaf buds are black, brittle and horrid - I'm not giving up yet on plums, peaches, pears or apples.  Some still have blossom and the flowers are more hardy than the tiny fruits, while until the tiny fruits fall off, well, you never know!  Apple and quince are just coming into their own - quince has to be the prettiest blossom!

Last week I was upset as the honesty seemed to have been affected by the frost and I expected it to collapse and go black.  Not a bit of it!  Today I was admiring it and I can not remember ever seeing better!

So we have had winter frosts, spring showers, summer sunshine and autumn gales this week.  Storm Diego rattled through on Friday, bringing heavy rain, strong winds even inland and bringing down power cables.  He blattered our broad beans which are looking a bit sorry for themselves, but I hope will pick up tomorrow in the sun.  This afternoon we had a picnic tea in the Garden in lovely sunshine.  In Canada, April is considered the cruellest month due to extremes of weather (and the Canadians really do extremes of weather), but that may become the new normal for us here in Western Europe too I guess.  Last night we had a dramatic sunset to add to the mix.

It's been a quiet week on the trail camera front - just one fuzzy bottom of what I think is a boar passing through.  I will move the camera somewhere more interesting soon.

The orchids in the Orchard and Meadow are starting to rev up to flowering, well one has a well developed flower head, while the lizard orchids are looking more and more like they are preparing for world domination.  It is actually the time when the bee orchids go discrete prior to putting on their delightful show in May.

However one of the domestic orchids is putting on a fine show of three flowers.  For some reason I find it very difficult to take a good photo of them all, but here is one bloom.

Today the French are voting in the first round of the presidential elections, and we can only watch in envy, not being citizens and not having a UK vote either.  The news services keep giving an update on the turnout so far - last time I looked it was close to 70%, some 4% down on the same time five years ago.  It is a worry as there are some real nutty candidates, some with truly offensive policies.  In many ways the real campaign will start tonight at about 10pm when they are 95% confident they know who the top two candidates will be, having seen off (possibly) the nutters.  Fingers crossed!

 

Dear deer!

I gather today is the start of spring and the weather is certainly making it feel that way, with a hint of sun and warmth but still a chilly wind.  It was the first of the vide greniers (empty attics - the equivalent of a car boot sale but it goes on all day) in one of the local villages, so after a spot of gardening, we thought it would be churlish not to go along.  We assumed that it would be quite small and not too many people, as it is very hard to get people out to do things or volunteer for stuff at the moment.  Wrong!  We trudged a good 3 kilometres looking at baby clothes, books, computer games, knicknacks and junk.  We did pick up a big bundle of ground staples and five big flower pots, as well as sore feet.  It was great to see a few friends in the crowd too.

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Plants are coming up which reminds us that the vegetable season gets going very soon now (yes, technically we already have garlic, shallots, broad beans, cabbages and radishes in, but this is the serious stuff).  John has been rotavating this year's potato plot.  This patch has been used before so is proving a bit easier than in previous years, and when it was last done 3 years ago, it was pretty solid clay, but it looks better this time around.  The half a tonne of horse poo we added last year should have helped.  Next week I will start putting in spuds.  The other images are of peonies that I planted a couple of months ago just starting to show and our Victoria Plum tree starting to bloom.

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It may be a coincidence with the end of the hunting season, but we are seeing (or the trail camera is seeing) more wildlife in the country estate.  The previous time I had the camera at this point, we saw NOTHING, not even a cat or a duck.  This time we had a passing boar and deer.  They went through at night and in the early morning.  This pretty doe didn't seem at all phased by the camera and stayed for a while, hence the photo and the nice video.

 

Before that, a whole bunch of them came through.  At least two bucks and probably at least one doe, but we can't tell really.

Then they stopped, not least so one of the bucks could do something about all that velvet on his antlers.  if you are looking at this on a big computer rather than a phone, it is worth getting this full screen to watch, as then you see all the action.

I have read up on how to get better footage on a trail, as in general where I put the camera is where I can see things are passing through.  I have changed the settings again and moved the camera, so let's see what the next week brings!  Although it could be nothing.