Do any of you have a camera in your garden yo watch wildlife at night?

[TreasuredMim]

I'm not into photography or technology but would really like to know what goes on in my back garden at night in relation to wildlife. And imagine I'd play it back on my laptop in the morning as I'm having my cup of tea. Does anyone do this?

I'm fortunate enough to live in an area where I feel very safe so camera is not for security.

What sort of camera would I need? I don’t have loads of cash to spend.

We’ve got a “trail camera”, which is what you’re looking for, cost about £200 - £250, but you can get cheaper. It’s set up to detect movement and then take a burst of video. Even so, it’s quite time consuming to go through all the video clips. It told us some interesting things, that there are not one but two foxes using the garden, that there are no fewer than 9 cats who think the garden is part of their territory, that one of our cats knows how to get through the cat flap when it is locked.

Friend has an array of security cameras around her garden which are hooked up to a giant screen in her living room and which she uses primarily to watch hedgehogs. But in real time. I presume it does record, but unless it’s movement activity, sitting through the recording will take a long time.

Problems we’ve found: moving vegetation can trigger the camera - keep branches and twigs out of the way; you need to be careful with timing, make sure the camera whirrs into action before the triggering animal has moved out of frame; animals don’t pose nicely - you’ll spend a lot of time identifying tails, or backsides 2inches from the camera.

I have a Blink XT2 (from Amazon) which was primarily for security. If it is triggered by activity it saves a short clip to the cloud. Never had a burglar, but one consequence is that it has been triggered by an occasional badger and fox, sometimes even two foxes playing. And at this time of year, spiders crawl over the lens too.

The advantage of this is that it only records when triggered, so every picture has captured something, even if only the neighbour's cat.

The current model of Blink has a subscription for using the cloud, but the older XT2 model (on eBay) is free to use.

We’ve got one which was about £40 from
Amazon. I’ll find a link and post it. Works really well. We see lots of foxes, cats and have even seen a badger!

www.kentfaith.co.uk/KF35.004_kf-hb-e2-hunting-camera-scouting-camera-wild-view-1080p-16mp-hd-pir-motion-night-vision-camera

It’s not connected to WiFi, it records into a mini as card which I bring in and plug in to the laptop each day

Thanks for the suggestions. Hadn't considered that I probably don't want constant recording.

Camera suggested by wohmum seems more in my price range so will check it out.

I haven't but having read this thread I'm going to get one!

@wohmum I'm thinking of getting that for DS for Christmas now. He's realised that a fox has a sleeping spot in the garden and he's quite taken with it.

[quote Namechangeforthis88]@wohmum I'm thinking of getting that for DS for Christmas now. He's realised that a fox has a sleeping spot in the garden and he's quite taken with it.[/quote]
He'll love it - we are still excited to see what has been captured on film each morning:)

You'll need a micro SD card and batteries - it uses 8 AAs at a time (but can run on 4). We invested in rechargeables

We’ve got one which we put out every night to monitor hedgehog activity. It’s an Apeman, bought from Amazon a few years ago and cost less than £60. It’s simple to operate and works on rechargeable batteries.
We only position it to take 15 second videos of one area of the garden so we can clearly see the comings and going’s. When we tried positioning it to take in a wider angle the images weren’t very clear. We (which could be me as I’m usually the one to retrieve the camera in the morning) now don’t bother removing the memory card other than if we see something particularly unusual on the video playback