Setting Up a New Remote Camera

Negotiating the fallen Beech tree blocking the path

Another year and - after the long Christmas break - a new working week begins with the coal black clouds of a horrendous storm, howling gales and torrential rain sweeping in from the southwest and extending the darkness of night well on towards mid-morning.

My plan today was to leave early and set up a new remote camera at a location I have been watching for several weeks. But, what with the driving - near horizontal - rain and brutal gusts of wind battering in get in through the front door like an early morning raid by special branch I decided to leave my first Otter Watching trip of the new year until later on. 

By 12 noon the wind had dropped and the the rain far less penetrating than first thing. So, I gathered my things together and set off towards my chosen location to fix up my remote camera. I have been observing this site on and off for the last few weeks and noticed quite a lot of otter activity. This must be a good place to set up my first camera of the new year. In fact I had already had another camera in-situ for a couple of weeks focused on a small pool just behind a timber boardwalk which runs for a short way alongside the river. Sadly this initial test run was not very fruitful in terms of otters all I managed to capture was the rear end of a moorhen and a short sequence of a Robin. Not a great start but i think this is mainly because I'm concerned not to make the locations of my cameras too obvious. Not that the otters might get camera shy or anything but Humans are more likely to interfere if they can see them and my chosen location is a bit too public for my own piece of mind. Consequently when I first set up my camera for the test run it wan't really pointing in the right direction. 

The group of white sandbags along the riverbank

The reason I chose this location was because I know the otter visits a short run of white sandbags which are set into the river bank just beyond the boardwalk. These seem to restrict the flow of water into a small channel which passes beneath the boardwalk. This means that the water makes a playful bubbling sound as it flows between the sandbags and some timer siding which keeps the channel from collapsing.

Otter Spraint on top on the white sandbags

Setting up a new remote camera.

The otters seem to love this group of sandbags. Not only do they regularly sprint on them but they have also taken to digging about in them and pulling them apart. Otters are often attracted to noises or to the sound of water where it flows more quickly or changes direction. My reasoning therefore was that perhaps the otters come to this point to slip down into the channel and consequently into the small pool behind. This clearly is not the case or if it is they haven't done this in the last two weeks. My new plan therefore is to move the camera and to place in at a new location that looks directly at the group of sandbags. If the otters arrive as they appear to do quite regularly I will be able to see if they enter the pool behind the boardwalk or stay within the main river channel.

So I have set up the new remote camera which I have had to place in a more open location. The camera is a infra-red camera which is trigged by a heat sensitive PIR unit built in to the camera housing. Should anything warm pass by this will trigger the recording of a 10s video sequence complete with sound. To try to keep the unit safe I've had to put it in a security box which I have screwed into the end of a large fallen tree stump. I've then disguised it as best I can without obscuring the lens with grass and sticks so that it blends into the surroundings a bit more. This seems like a a great location to catch any otter activity on the sandbags so we'll have to wait and see what happens over the next week or so.

I have also placed another camera under a small bridge near-by since there looks to be a lot of activity under the bridge which is on the direct route towards the sandbags discussed earlier.