A Paws Race

At the moment I feel as tough I am in a paws race. Its like the arms race but involves sighting of wildlife. As no sooner do I relate my encounter with a pair of Weasels but my friend posts of her encounter with a Racoon. She even has the pictures to prove it.

Well I had better not mention the herds of Wildebeest that past through last week or the pride of lions that took shade at the bottom of my street… Or were they sheep and domestic moggies?

While I am jealous, I know that I am lucky to see the wildlife that I do encounter. However, I now have to report on one that I missed. I was sitting watching some television at six PM yesterday when I noticed a large flock of Jackdaws and Crows. As this can be a sign of the Red Kites I took a look. I could not see anything that would have caused them to rise on mass like that and as this can also be part of mating behaviour, I assumed that was what it was.

Today though I was told that a Sparrow Hawk was spotted at that same time and it flew low over my street carrying prey in its talon’s, chased off by the corvids. Well I missed seeing that.

However an interesting opportunity may have arisen for me. Someone asking if I ever filmed at a particular location contacted me some time ago. While it is accessible for me, as I have so many places I could visit it remains on my "when I have time" list. Without boring you, this correspondence continued until I had to ask if there was a point to all the questions that I was being asked. Finally it emerged that this person was part of a small conservation group and wanted to produce some DVDs to help raise funds.

Today I went to meet these people. They already have some film that they want to incorporate but equally they want some new film shot as well. However, while several folks have tried to produce DVDs none has passed the quality threshold they set themselves. As while the discs can be played on computers they don’t play in domestic machines.

Having explained the problems with my computer they still were willing to wait until I got that fixed. Further, they are willing to pay for the tapes I would need to film the wildlife on the sites they are involved with. Now me being a cynical old mouse I had to ask why they were asking me when clearly they had some skills already. Well it appears that it is my films of bugs and beetles that caught their attention. Also I appear, to them, that I have the time to try and film some of the critters. Well I put them right on that as while I am prepared to put in the time and effort, I still have all the normal activities of life to undertake too.

Anyway, I am considering the offer, often having privileged access or good supportive local knowledge is a major advantage. Thus I would be able to escalate the paws race further. However I know that this will be a futile race that I can never win, as no matter what rare or exotic creature my (friendly) rival will just post her sighting of a Unicorn and have the picture to prove it.