Update

Well, the second brood of Swallows have fledged and will soon be off on their long trip to Africa, the Barn Owl didn't lay a clutch in the nest box, and the strong winds put paid to one of the HD cameras. Although it was well secured, a large branch fell onto the camera , breaking it open and knocking it into a beck.

I've not managed as much night time filming as I'd planned, but I did make some progress with my experiments at adding extra infra red light so I could film in darkness with a camcorder. I've used the set up to film an Otter travelling beneath a bridge then swimming off downstream (the video can be seen on our youtube channel).

On the subject of Otters, we're coming to the time of year when more get killed crossing roads. The darker mornings and evenings coincide with the heaviest volume of traffic, so more animals fall victim as they cross busy roads. Just this morning as I was travelling to work I saw an Otter lying at the roadside and on pulling over I thought by the size of it that it was probably a Dog Otter, but when I got closer I saw that it was actually a large Bitch, and worse still it was obviously suckling Cubs which unfortunately will have very little chance of surviving. The picture isn't pretty but sadly this thing happens so often...