With the mornings and nights being so dark, I only get to see the pond in daylight at the weekends when not at work, so thought I would set up the camera trap to try to get some intimate images of the Teal that I knew were using the pond. As you can see from the video, I only managed to get a distant view of a Male Teal, but when I looked through the 40 videos that were triggered over the course of the week, I was surprised and excited to see that I had managed to capture a short video of a visiting Little Egret. The 38 other videos from the week were a mixture of Mallard and Moorhens bobbing about in the fog; not very exciting, so I decided not to post those. The great thing about a camera trap is there is always that opportunity to be surprised by what you see. I have seen little Egret on the pond one or two times before in the summer but was super pleased to see that they are still attracted to come to my little pond when I am at work, the "Build it and they will come" expression seems to hold some truth. What a great way to start the weekend after a busy week in the office.
I have slowed the video's down to extend thet viewing time of both birds as the original clips are quiet short; if you look closely, you can see that the Egret is dabbing about with its feet in the native pond weed (Booklime/Veronica Beccabunga) the edge of the pond, it is trying to flush out food prey. Enjoy!
