Pondguru vs Nature #6

Hello there, welcome back. In this video I'm going to be setting three gamecams, all for the same species, at least I hope to get this particular species, and that is the little owl. Now, in a previous video, I tried to get it using one camera, and I got a few different types of birds, but I've just seen it again in the little cluster of trees near my house, so I'm going to be setting the 12 megapixel Vixing gamecam. 14 megapixel low-glow Bushnell Trophy cam and the 14 megapixel no-glow Bushnell cam. Hopefully, one of these three will get it. So that's the target species for this video, the little owl. It's a species of owl which is only about 6-7 inches high, not very big at all. Plenty of tawnies around. But the little owl, for whatever reason, is more difficult to get on camera because most of the time it's in bushes. It's not on big limbs shouting on. It behaves more like a little blackbird than an owl. So it's going to be a difficult one. Let's get these set. Oh, and if you're watching this, that means I've already got these cameras in. So if you recognise the area, you're wasting your time looking for them because I've already got them back. Very important that, I won't put a game cam video out unless the cameras are already back with me, so just bear that in mind. I'm coming! Now I do know that little owls eat a lot of beetles and grubs and worms and so on, so we've got a bare patch of earth here and good perches above it. Problem is, we've got quite a lot of perches. Can't see any obvious places where there's been little claw marks, but they do have very small feet. Um, no, I will tell it's underneath. Not that I can see anyway, um, there's a bit of bird muck that just looks like black bird muck. Nothing that would scream owl to me. Nevertheless, this does look like a good place. We've got a good perch, we've got good feeding area here, and just imagine beetles and all sorts of invertebrates crawling out of the grass, coming across this bare earth. This is going to be a kill zone for little owls. It has to be. Or at least, I would like to think it's going to be. Well, let's get the first one set. This one is going to be the Vixing 12 megapixel low-glow camera. And I think I'm going to set it up there, looking down at possibly two of these different perches. That looks good. Now, I'll put links to all these cameras in the video description and in the pinned comment if you're interested. This looks good, but I don't think one camera is going to cover both perches, unfortunately. I'm going to look more towards this one. This one is very horizontal. And it's about the right distance to hopefully get a good picture as well. It's approximately four feet away. You know, one thing about these cameras is they always make the straps far too long. I think the manufacturers must think that we all have giant redwoods in our back garden. Yep, I think if we have it up there, angled down, even if we don't get it on that perch, we may get it on the ground feeding from another perch. That's looking pretty good. I'll just bring the camera up just to let you see how that's angled towards this perch. There you go, I've just put a big stone in behind it here. That's very solid, and hopefully that is looking down towards this perch. And maybe it's that perch, and maybe it's the ground as well. We'll find out. One's a cracking perch, but it's just too open. That one, just there. Absolutely perfect to stick a camera on there, but it's too open. Anybody within 50 yards is going to see a camera there. I'm bummed about that. But here, we've got an equally good perch. And if we can strap a game cam on here somehow, looking along this perch, I think we might be in business here. Again, I can't see any obvious signs that something's been sitting on it. But it does look very likely. I really like this. It's got a clear flight line down there and also back through here. I've got a thorn in my head. Alright, that's that set there. That's pretty well camouflaged. Hopefully, that'll be looking onto here. I'd love to think we could get it sitting on here because it's got a lovely backdrop to this picture. We don't want any cats in it. There's juice left in this one. So hopefully the batteries will last until we actually capture something. It's so difficult to get these things lined up when you can't actually see what it's looking at. Now here's an absolutely cracking perch, but again, this one is just too open. There's definitely been something sitting on there as well. You can see where it's scraped all this dead bark off. Tell you what, to hell with it. This is too good to pass. That's a lovely little perch. Make it a little bit more comfortable for them. This is a cracker, definitely. Got to be something here. That's interesting. Very, very fine fluff. Not on the perch that I'm looking at, but right next to it. That looks like underfur. Not underfur. I mean like under feathers. Very, very fluffy. I would suspect that that was from an owl. Good sign. That's eight new batteries in. Brand new batteries. It's full bang up to the top. That should give us plenty of footage before they die. In fact, In theory, I should be able to leave that out for six months or more, filling up that memory card with pictures and video, but I don't know why, but that particular Bushnell camera has drained the batteries before. I think I'm going to have to start taking the batteries out of that when I'm storing it, because it doesn't do much work. I put it away, get it out, and the batteries seem to be flat in this one. Come on, this is the no-glow functional one. Consequently, it's the most expensive game cam that I've got. And if it's draining batteries, that's not very good. So there's two tips there. One, before you leave home, check that the batteries are all working in your game cams. And two, if you're going to be storing your game cams, take the batteries out. Um, because the cameras are angled down towards the ground, I wouldn't be surprised if we got the odd rabbit, or fox, or badger. As far as birds of prey go... Possibly a kestrel, although it might be too close to the ground. I'm going to go around. Maybe it's a sparrowhawk, didn't mention that before, but possibly they like to hunt edges. Um... Almost certainly a little owl, that's our target species, and maybe a tawny owl. Well, it's exceptionally windy this afternoon, and those cameras have been out for about four days and four nights. I reckon that should be enough to get something on them, so let's take a look. Well, the first one's still there. Second one's there, and I've just seen the little owl fly away from the next bush up. So it's obviously still using this hedge line. We've got to get it. We simply have to have it on one of these three cameras. God, there's the third one. When the sunlight's hitting that, that's very obvious, isn't it? Just as well nobody comes round here. I don't think I'll be setting them here for a very, very long time after putting this video out, just in case. But you can see, hopefully, where that one's been looking to. That, I think that one is going to be our best bet. That one is the no glow camera. I'm 99% certain we're going to have the little owl on one of these cameras. They've all been triggered. I think the least any of them have got on was about 75 different bits of footage and video. So assuming that isn't all of the cows rubbing on the bottom of the trees, I think we're going to be in for some good results here. And I'll do the cheap Vixing 12 megapixel camera first. So these are the results from that. Bear in mind it was in quite a dark place. Okay, now moving on to the Bushnell 14 megapixel low-glow camera. That one was in a very, very light place. And lighter still was the 14 megapixel Bushnell no-glow camera. So let's take a look at what it captured. Now, I know this video was very long, but I do like to go into detail about the positioning and the setting of the game cams. Because I imagine there's a lot of people who own a game cam who would want that information. But if you enjoyed this video, hit the thumbs up, share it wherever you want, and I'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. What do you think, Angus?