This is the weekly round up for the beginning of May.
This morning the sun was shining so I hopped on my motorbike, Feisty, and set off for my village house. Once there, I donned my bush garb and traipsed across the now overgrown meadow to go check on my trailcam – I had a big grin on my face and was loving life.
As soon as I reached the forest’s edge, my stomach churned. The ground had extensive sign of wild boar – where they’d dug it up in search of roots and grubs. Once inside the forest, there wasn’t one single square inch of ground that hadn’t been turned over. There were boar trotter prints everywhere – which meant an extremely large sounder (herd) of wild boar had been very busy – and were most likely still in the area, lying up out of the sun.
Not wanting to wander in amongst them unannounced, especially as they now have newborn piglets, I told them loudly that I was coming in and that I was just there to check my game camera down in the creek. Thankfully, they weren’t where I went. I’d heard, second hand, from a local bus driver that there are way too many boar this year and he has to constantly stop as they bolt across the road. This adds a certain amount of danger to going into the forest.
For the first time in a while, I managed to get some critters which don’t belong in a Lincolnshire garden:
A young wild boar (probably a yearling) (Sus scrofa scrofa)
A marten (not sure if this is a Beech or a Pine Marten) (Martes martes or Martes foina)
A melanistic Red Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris). Both the melanistic and the standard red variety are common in my area.
A Wild Cat (Felis silvestris)
Here is some video footage of the Wild Cat stalking a bird:
The video function on my trail cam has gone so most of my videos turn out as File Errors – which is a shame with the boar as the noises they make are incredible
