Watching Wildlife at Night or Not!

Last night it looked as though I had found myself in trouble. A couple of weeks ago as I reported here, I was told of a Deer that had given birth in the corner of a field next to a local village near here. I have gone out looking and I had seen the Roe Deer active in the general location and decided to take the Camera out. With any form of night video work I settled down prepared for a long wait. The camera was on the tripod and the IR light set up ready. The way that I am finding it useful to work is to switch the light on and use the camera to scan the area in short bursts. That way I preserve battery life but keep the camera ready to start filming should I get any animal in my range.

As well as the hoped for deer I also expected to see foxes rabbits and possibly a badger. What was quite nice was that I had found myself quite a nice comfortable place to sit with the camera so that I had a clear view of the area I needed to watch. I had been there for about an hour when I saw a man out walking his dog. With the IR I could see him coming towards me. Then he must have seen me as he let the dog off the lead and called out. I came out of my cover and explained what I was doing and everything seemed fine. Then less than half an hour later I spotted another person with a dog, but this person was a police officer with a police dog.

It has not been the first time that I have been stopped by the police, nor will it be the last. But this time I was being threatened with arrest unless I moved on. This I objected to as I was not doing anything unlawful. In the end I agreed to go to the police station until they could verify who I was.

While I fully understand that the police have an important job to do, and while watching and filming wildlife may be an eccentric thing to do, it is a rather harmless thing to do. However the upshot was that I did not get to see much and I had to waste several hours while the checked that I was who I said I was and that I lived where I said. I was glad that I had film on the tape of wildlife as that demonstrated that I was not just a burglar who had stolen the video camera. I did get an apology of sorts but it was prefixed with “Well what should I expect”.

I have never had a problem with the police before, and I had proof of identity on me. I think what hacked off the police officer was that he got wet and muddy. Then because I would not just go home, well that made him feel that I was not respecting his authority. In fact as I was given a lift home, by two other officers, they acknowledged that I was doing nothing that should have warranted what happened.

Well the events generated a blog posting at least but I would have preferred to have been talking about the wildlife.