A new inhabitant?

This video was taken with our wildlife camera on the 2nd October, it is several 10 second videos joined together.

The camera was located in the bottom of our chicken coop, fortunately the chickens don't really use it. (For scale the boards you can see are 20 cm wide)

We think it is a brown rat...

At the moment it is doing no harm, other than digging a few holes around and about.

The big question we have is, should we let it get on with life or should we get rid. My other question (Col) is will it eat a chicken or even three... The interweb appears to say... Yes Yes Yes Please...

Any advice would be appreciated...

The camera is going to look at the feeder tonight... Watch this space.

Egg Thief...

On our return to Braye on Monday we noticed quite a number of hens egg shells around the garden.

The problem was made worse when we spoke to Max, our neighbour, who had been feeding the hens and collecting the eggs. He had only had two eggs for the entire two weeks we had been away!!

We now have the technology to keep watch... The first job for our new wildlife camera strapped to a tree overlooking the nest boxes...

This is what we caught...

It was as we suspected, the thieving Magpies...

Anyone out there with a couple of spare cartridges and a 12 bore!!!

A New Toy...

We have bought ourselves a new toy... from Aldi where else!!

It's a waterproof wildlife camera and like all other electrical goods from that store, it has a 3 year warranty. It takes both HD video and photographs. Interestingly it is available this week both in the UK and France BUT with a price difference... £70 against €100...

We have only done a couple of tests with it here in the UK ...

It works well and we look forward to using it in Braye... if only to discover what makes the tracks we keep finding, what digs holes in the garden and what poos all over the place...

We will post any interesting results...