Caught on camera

©The Wildlife Trust for South and West Wales

Revealing the hidden wildlife on our reserves

Our nature reserves are great places to see wildlife, but you could spend all day outside and still only get glimpses into the lives of the many animals that call these wild places home. To help look after our wildlife, it's important to know what species are present and what they're doing. Across the UK, we're using trail cameras to answer some of these questions.

Here's a small selection of the stories we've revealed...

Alderney Wildlife Trust

Alderney have been using trail cams to record water rail activity around their ponds, including birds stretching, hopping and getting ready for big migration flights.

©Alderney Wildlife Trust

Kent Wildlife Trust

Kent have been using trail cameras at Ham Fen for the past few years to view the activities of the reintroduced beavers, an animal that is crepuscular – mostly active at dawn and dusk. These snapshots into their lives are helping to build a better picture of the activity of these fairly elusive animals.

©Kent Wildlife Trust

The Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire

At Trumpington Meadows, swift box cams have captured some fascinating behaviour including a swift transferring a nice tasty bolus of spiders and insects into a chick’s mouth, plus multiple shots of the parasitic louse flies that live on these birds crawling all over the parents.

©The Wildlife Trust BCN

Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust

The Rutland Ospreys nest cam reveals the stories of these fish-loving birds of prey. Since 2010 the same female, an un-ringed Scottish bird nicknamed 'Maya', has occupied the nest. In 2015 she paired with a ringed male (known as ‘33’ due to his ring number) and they have bred together every year since. This star pair have successfully raised 14 chicks, including the 150th chick for the Rutland Osprey Project in 2019.

Shropshire Wildlife Trust

Camera traps have been an essential tool in helping Shropshire Wildlife Trust's Stuart Edmunds prove the presence of pine martens in the county, where they were presumed extinct for decades. The first Shropshire pine marten appeared on camera in July 2015, in woodland previously deemed unsuitable habitat for the elusive mammals.