Snow - oh -oh-oh-oh

And so the snow has arrived. Earliest widespread snowfall in 17 years you know. And early snow means early footprints so get your wellies and camo gear on and start tracking! Seriously, this lovely thick snow is just awesome to discover whats been out and about in your garden. Footprints never lie. But beware, objects can appear larger than they seem - snow melts and voila! you have a yetti or, better yet, a gigantic otter mooching round your garden. Unlikey, but you may just have a badger or average sized otter coming for a snoop.

One such footprint excitement occured not so long ago. As the theme goes, I set up a camera to capture footage of the Ouseburn otter. And as the theme goes, I haven't caught anything since the last spider-covered triumph. Buuuut we did have some (pause) footprints! Yes, my mate Bob called me in great excitement to say that otter tracks had miraculously appeared on the walkway (that he built. Obviously.) along the Ouseburn river. So we had footprints and we had a camera watching that walkway. Recipe for Mr O to be caught on camera. Right? Wrong. Bob had moved the camera to see if he could get his badgers on camera. Nothing wrong with that. Otters aren't the be all and end all. But, typically the few nights that the cameras were trained on the badgers was super windy. And super windy means lots of movement which means lots of false triggering of the camera. So anyway, the camera was dutifully placed back on its post on the Ouseburn (once the risk of flooding was over) and promptly ran out of battery. Super. One Ouseburn otter. One stealthcam HD. No blooming power. Story of my life. But still the struggle goes on.

However, its not all bad news. Quite often something cool, other than an otter, is picked up. Take this pouncing fox for example. Drainage pipe. A field covered in lovely long grass. I cant think of a better use for it. It seems to do just the trick (if you have sound, turn it up - some definite squeaking going on here).

And while waiting for the otter at Bob's, these little critters all turned up. Like I said, Mr O is not neccessarily the star of the show.