The Wild Ways Well Week

We had a bit of a surprise with the Open group this week, you may remember that last week we placed a camera trap on a badger sett in the hope of getting some film evidence of these awesome animals sharing our woodlands.  We checked the trap after a couple of days and were delighted to find that we had over 5 hours of footage!  Whilst this was exciting it was also a bit daunting as it meant we’d have to wade through all that footage…

Luckily super volunteer Becci was on the case and it didn’t take her long (well it took her ages but she didn’t complain once) to find us some amazing footage of a happy wild family playing on the sett.. the big surprise however was that it wasn’t badgers it was foxes!  We captured some amazing footage of the two adult foxes and three tiny, adorable, cubs playing both at night and out in the sunshine as well, showing just how relaxed they are in their home.

So how come we mistook a fox den for a badger sett?  Well it turns out the badgers and foxes were actually sharing the structure!  We have footage of badgers spending time down one end and the foxes over at the other end.  This just shows – yet again – that wildlife often hasn’t read the same nature books that we have.  Foxes and badgers appear to be completely unaware that they’re supposed to live in separate homes.

As well as camera trapping we had a walk down Cumbernauld Glen where we lit our Kelly Kettle, tried some sound mapping, listened to the birds and conducted a quick litter pick.  Unfortunately the site has been hit by vandals since the last time we were here with lots of rubbish and signs that someone has tried to set fire to one of the trees.  We tidied the rubbish as best we could and we’ll try to keep an eye on the site over the coming weeks.

We also had our last (for now) participatory video session and we had great fun learning how to shoot our own mini nature films.  I think everyone got a kick out of this and it was wonderful to see how confident everyone seemed in their roles, whether in front of or behind the cameras.

We’ll do some more filming over the coming weeks and see if we can produce a wildlife masterpiece!

Wild Ways Well is a partnership project between The Conservation Volunteers and The Scottish Wildlife Trust, delivered by Cumbernauld Living Landscape and funded by the Green Infrastructure Community Engagement Fund and Transport Scotland with the support of Scottish Natural Heritage.

Paul Barclay