Our fish pond has started to look a bit messy and polluted so I set up the wildlife camera one night to see what is going on:
As we suspected, we had a duck and two drakes that were visiting us at night – these we were previously chasing away during the day.
We discovered that one of the drakes and the duck spent most of the night on the pond; the other drake was mostly on the grass and border by the pond (it is difficult to see the birds but look for the specks of white where the light reflects off their eyes):
So we put some temporary netting up around the pond, supported by bamboo canes:
The following night we see three puzzled birds working out what to do. However the duck flew up and into the pond where she spent the night, the two drakes kept to the outside:
Hmmm, so we crossed the pond above the netting with string hoping this would keep them off, but they didn’t return the following two nights – hopefully they have go the message!
One bonus though, one of the nights the camera showed a hedgehog wandering about:
Note that these a crops from the original photos. The IR light of the camera is supplemented by two additional lamps set either side of the scene.