Morning walk by the flashes

I guess this is my first Wildlife related post so here it goes. As I woke up early this morning at 5am and had plenty of energy from the early morning sun as well as the beautiful dawn chorus. I thought it would be a good time to go to do some early morning filming as every where in the countryside is quiet and there's nobody to disturb the mammals or birds your trying to film.

I decided that i would go and check out Croxton flash and the stretch of canal that runs past the an aqueduct which allows the canal to go over the river. The river Dane flows 2 miles along the canal past the flashes. The canal side has  mixed habitats of farmland, marsh, canal and river to woodland. Today was a good day for Reed Warblers and I managed to film them as the sun came up. As the sun rose higher it set off the territorial singing as normally you only tend to hear them and not see them, I felt very privileged to get this beautiful shot.

After a late tea at about 7pm I decided to go and setup a camera trap on the river where I think there maybe be Otters. I think there using the bridge once in a while to spraint on a nearby sand bank and as there are tracks coming out of the water and reentering the water 2 meters up river on the same bank which is located under a river bridge. For now its best that to keep the area a secret just in case I ended up finding Otters using the Sand bank to rest as they travel up and down the river. I think I discovered otter footprints there a month ago but can't be positive due to quality of the prints in hard sand. So I knew Otters are around but I started thinking of reasons why an otter maybe passing through this area. One reason I thought they were using the area was because nearby there is a pile of boulders in the water and when I had a look under them an eel about 20cm swam out into the main river and disappeared into the deeper water.  On this part of the river there are not just Eels but there are plenty of minnows, Bullheads ,Chub ,Trout and Salmon. In 2009 further down the river Dane I stumbled upon a crayfish possibly a White-Clawed Crayfish but I cannot be sure but having all these fish coming back tells me that the river is healthy which is great for the river Dane.  We had some bad pollution locally which really damaged the rivers ecology a few years ago so hopefully Otters are coming to my local patch and maybe begin to breed in the area. I will be camera trapping for 5 nights in a row to give me more of a chance of filming a otter passing by the area.

Thanks for reading my blog
Stay wild, be happy and be safe

Mike