How I use technology to track wildlife in my garden

When I moved into this property, it was over 20 years ago, and I started building it into my own little mini nature reserve. I was brought up on a farm so I was used to a thousands of acres farm to roam. I then had my garden and I was developing it for wildlife. So I was putting in nest boxes and soon I was having tawny owls, kestrels and then I put a hide outside the kestrels nest boxes, the tawny owl nest boxes. And my slight frustration was that I couldn’t see what was happening inside the nest boxes. So I got some very cheapish cameras to put them in the nest boxes and soon became very very hooked on this. So I do a lot of almost ‘set design’, using old pieces of tree and building nest chambers. And this then developed on to one of the projects that’s literally almost taken over my life which is studying stoats and weasels. With the kestrels and tawny owls I was getting some stunning, intimate footage right the way through the breeding season. And I saw a weasel in the garden one day. Every year I try and pick a new subject and try and study it intensely. The tawny owls, the kestrel - I almost knew them inside out after a few years. And then I saw this little weasel running around the garden and I thought ‘could this be a project?’ And this has turned out to be a 6 year project which has taken up vast amounts of my time. I haven’t left the house for weeks on end because I was worried I’d miss a moment of behaviour, breeding behaviour. I am literally glued to the screens. I have all sorts of technology that I was using, like doorbell sensors close to where the weasels would move through. I don’t use any of this now, it’s all visual on cameras now, but I used doorbell sensors. I even used a piece of string  with a falconry bell on the end so if I put a mouse out in the feeding box they would pul the piece of string and the bell in my studio would ring. So I used all this. And even in the early stages with the tawny owls I would actually have sensors, just normal sensors that people put on their drive to alert them when someone’s walking in, I would actually have them next to my bed so I would wake up and get down to a hide and start photographing the tawny owls when they arrived. So I was a bit obsessed. It’s just fascinating what you can learn from these animals when you start watching them throughout the year and you’re able to then watch them almost 24/7. But it was the weasels and stoats that really changed my direction because it had just never been done before, studying wild stoats and weasels in the wild, to the level that I‘ve studied them. I’ve almost now become well-renowned for the knowledge that I’ve gleaned from watching stoats and weasels. I’ve filmed them mating, I’ve filmed them through their breeding season. I haven’t filmed them giving birth yet, I got very very close to that last year. So there’s all sorts of things still to learn.

 

Kayleigh: Absolutely. It’s just so amazing to have this window into their lives that you just wouldn’t otherwise have.

 

Robert: Yeah it’s incredible. I’ve almost mapped the garden so if they appear on one camera I know which camera they’re going to next and I know all of the routes they take around the garden. And it’s learning about the relationships between animals like stoats and weasels. They’re a very similar animal but the stoats actually predate the weasels quite heavily. The experts have theories about stoats predating weasels but I’ve actually captured it on film; stoats trying to catch the weasels on several occasions. And I’ve actually seen it with my own eyes twice, a stoat catching a weasel. So it’s important research, I’ve got someone coming to see me from New Zealand next month to discuss stoats because obviously they’re an invasive species there. And I am a real naturalist, I understand that stoats are not supposed to be there and there needs to be an eradication programme there. And that is something I am will to be part of and help. But I absolutely love them dearly at the same time and I have a great amount of respect for them. But the important thing there is the indigenous wildlife-

 

Kayleigh: Absolutely and I went out to one of their pest free zones a few years ago and it really is amazing the difference to see the areas where they have eradicated the pests, which of course are the animals we love over here, but it makes such a difference to the biodiversity there it is just incredible. And your knowledge, I can’t imagine there’s anyone else in the world with such an intimate knowledge of these animals.

 

Robert: Yeah I’ve been watching them since 2014 every day. Practically not a day goes by when I’m not watching stoats and weasels and if I go away I do miss them. I go to very nice places around the world with plenty of wildlife but the first thing I do when I get home is I want to check how the stoats and weasels are getting on. So they are very much a part of my life.

 

Kayleigh: So you must collect a huge amount of data, how do you store all of this?

 

Robert: Oh that’s not my job!

 

Kayleigh: Hahaha fantastic!

 

Robert: So a lot of the watching of the data is done by people that work for me in the office. So on the video side of things in the summer I’ve got almost three people working on the wildlife side, watching the cameras, editing the footage as well. It’s like a full time role for two people doing the editing-

 

Kayleigh: Oh easily!

 

Robert: Easily yeah! But we have to make decisions about which cameras- we can’t watch every moment of every camera. And some are almost like compulsive viewing, you might be trawling through footage- So the cameras that we use are very good security cameras and the system that we use is a PC-based system that’s very user-friendly to look back at the footage. So that all helps but there’s still a tremendous amount of data to go through for all of those cameras. So we’re watching them live throughout the day and sometimes in the evenings. So wherever I walk in the house, whether in my studio or whether I’m in the office, the gallery, or in my house, I can see monitors of the chose cameras I want to watch. So I might have a bank of monitors displaying over 20 to 30 of the cameras that we’re interested in at that particular time of year. So it’s a big job, it’s a big undertaking, and I can’t help but keep putting up more cameras and trying to discover more stuff!

 

Kayleigh: I can see that and I can see why. Just to get those moments that you capture, it’s well worth it. Such an incredible job to be able to actually pull all that together. So in some of those moments that you’ve captured, is there anything that has particularly surprised you on  the cameras that you didn’t expect?

 

Robert: There’s many surprises throughout the year. It’s how connected some of the birds are to each other, like the tawny owls are a very very strong bonded pair, as are the kestrels. So we have the breeding season and we think of the birds disbanding a little bit but the bonds between the pair are incredibly strong and even in July we see the birds nest scraping and preparing and courting for the following breeding season the following year. So that was one of the things that really surprised me was how early the birds are thinking about their future breeding season. It’s not long after they’ve actually raised their chicks they’re then going back into those nest boxes, making a nest scrape, making it tidy, and actually guarding those nest boxes.

 

But probably the most surprising thing is the relationship between all of these animals and birds. And the thing I am most proud of is actually following stoat families that I know so many of the individuals by the facial markings. I’ve followed one female for three years and she produced- her middle litter produced a female stoat that’s now known as Bandita and is quite a famous stoat now. She was born in 2016 and she is still with us today. So I know these animals as individuals and I am able to follow their lives which is probably the most exciting thing to me is that I am not just following a stoat or a weasel, I actually know which stoat or weasel that is. I know their whole family structure. And they’re very difficult things to study, they do come and go, they don’t live very long sometimes. But to have Bandita with me, she’ll be coming into another breeding season-

 

Kayleigh: I saw the weasels programme not long ago and it was just fantastic to follow that. But I know that getting that footage must have been so much work to get to to that point.

 

Robert: It is yeah, I can spend weeks fitting cameras and it’s all got to be done at the right time of year. You can’t trick a stoat because they have so many senses that are very alert; you’ve got the sight, crucially their sense of smell. If you start touching cameras near a nest box you’re going to have to wait a month before you can even think about getting a stoat in there. They’re very clever animals.

And the other slides you're showing at the moment, the kingfishers, that’s another white proud project that I’ve been able to film inside kingfisher nests. There it’s almost like doing heart surgery with wildlife, they’re a very sensitive bird to work with. And to be within literally less than a foot away from a kingfisher, sat on a nest brooding the chicks, is something that I’ll never ever- you barely breathe. It’s one of those moments that’s quite amazing, that you’re there within a foot of a breeding kingfisher, you can hear all those wonderful noises that they make inside the nesting chamber. And when the chicks are the size they are in that picture, around 12 days old, the female is almost crowd-surfing. She had seven chicks under her at that moment and just a day or two after that she can barely put her feet down. And she’s almost crowd-surfing over these little chicks that are all jostling for position and all calling. They are a real challenge to actually photograph or film them inside the nesting chamber.

 

Kayleigh: I can’t even imagine the feeling, you’re heart must almost stop, to get that close in to something like that.

 

Robert: Yeah I mean you’ve got a lot of responsibility as well, those chicks are tiny and you’ve just got to make sure that you get everything absolutely right. I rehearse everything in- I have a whole nesting chamber built in my office so like changing the cameras or cleaning the glass, I can actually then practice everything that I need to do like getting the camera settings correct. I can practice all of this inside because I’ve got a replica of what I’m working with in the wild and that’s pretty important. It’s a lot of work to build a whole replica of what you’re going to be working with in the wild but when you get into the wild there’s no room for any error at all. But that’s so special to see the kingfishers raising their chicks and they grow at an alarming rate. Within three weeks they’re well on their way to being fledged. They are quite incredible little things.

 

Kayleigh: That really is incredible, it really is. So tell us a little bit about your photography because obviously you must produce these amazing images often for your artwork but there’s a massive art in actually getting some of these pictures.

 

Robert: Yeah the one you’re looking at now that’s Stanley the stoat, that’s actually Bandita’s brother. He was one of my favourite stoats really but he only stayed with me throughout the summer and then we lost him in the winter. They have a difficult life some of the male stoats. So yeah getting pictures like this, this can be weeks and weeks of work. So the thinking behind my cameras originally was an early warning system. So I could sit in my studio painting and I would have monitors (one monitor at the beginning which then turned into five) - I would then have an early warning system. So I could be in my studio painting and then when a stoat would arrive in the garden I could then photograph it, whether it was out of the window of the kitchen or whether it was from a hide. So then I used to sneak into my hide from the kitchen, from the living room, but sometimes the stoats would scent me or see me. So then I built a tunnel that I could fit through, about 7 metres long. So I now go through a tunnel from my living room into my hide where I’ve got another bank of monitors. I can be quite happily painting in my studio, a stoat arrive, I rush downstairs, through the tunnel, into a hide, and I can start filming and photographing wild stoats. But this particular picture, I think it took me about two months to get this particular picture. And that was the picture that I wanted to get and I didn't stop until I got the absolute- it’s the right light, taken at half two in the afternoon. Stoats usually work on either end of the day quite often so in the morning and in the evening. But everything has to come together for a picture like this, the light has to be correct and the stoat has to obviously be doing what it- I trained it to jump across this area for titbits of food. And the branch is put in there by myself which is hornbeam, so that branch had to be changed regularly to keep the leaves fresh. But it all comes together sometimes and you get a picture-

 

Kayleigh: Oh absolutely but you know the work that goes- I think often people see these images and they think ‘oh you know it’s just so perfect’. But the work that goes into it, and like you say the light and the timing, it really is quite a work to get to that. But oh my goodness so worth it to get that shot. It really is. Well thank you so much Robert, I really appreciate you coming on today to speak to us.

 

Robert: No problem

 

Kayleigh: And I am sorry about the tech issues but at least we got there in the end. It’s amazing how we can manage all these cameras and yet the internet will fox us.

 

Robert: Yeah well I’m quite severely dyslexic so I can use cameras literally like they’re part of my body but when it comes to computers I am not the best person on computers in the world.

 

Kayleigh: And that’s the thing isn’t it! I often say this, I’m like ‘I can do this but something simple to someone else - no’. Well thank you so much for joining us Robert. How can people find out more? I know lots of people in the group will know of you but please let us know where’s the best place to learn more.

 

Robert: So obviously we’ve got the gallery here in Thixendale, in Yorkshire, which is a great venue for people to visit because they can see literally everything. They can see the wildlife live on the cameras throughout the year, but the breeding season (which is going to soon be coming) is the most exciting time. But we also do a lot on social media as well. So we do Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube; there’s about 95,00 people following us now so we’re obviously doing something right.

 

Kayleigh: Wow! I can see why. And if you do ever go anywhere near Robert’s gallery just go, it’s absolutely fantastic. It’s well worth a visit, I can’t think of anywhere else in the world like it. But I will put the links, Robert, in the description to this video and for those of you watching live I will pop them in the description once I’ve processed this video and then you’ll be able to hop on there. So thank you so much, thank you Robert for joining us. Thank you so much everyone for watching and we will see you again for another interview soon.