Trail cam videos

[Phil1]

I have uploaded four videos from my new trail cam. They are, I think, quite amusing and informative. The blog post is here. Since I have discovered that I have more than one visitor, I now have absolutely no idea what was happening in the hog house earlier in the season. Curiously, the house remains unoccupied so, having first checked on the in-house cam, I cleaned it out, and replenished the hay.

I do still hope to see hoglets – my guess is that it is still too early for them to be leaving the nest with their mothers. My guess is that will appear in 2 – 3 weeks time.

[Nic]

Hi Phil1

First of all, I seriously think you need to stop trying to second guess hogs. I sometimes think they like to keep us guessing and it is just a case of wait and see!

I have had a look at your videos. I agree with you that you really need to try to get the camera further back. As it is you only get such a tiny amount of the action showing that it is not easy to reach much of a conclusion about what is going on.

However, the first video with the ‘shy’ hog looks to me what hogs do. Many of them will prefer to stay near ‘cover’ if they can. The second video where you think the smaller hog is being bullied is actually the larger, male, hog making advances to the smaller female. The reversing motion of the small hog, together with the huffing noise she’s making is typical of female’s behaviour during the courtship ‘dance’. It’s difficult to say from what’s on the video how big she is. She appears small in relation to the male, but maybe he is a very large male. But, it maybe that she is a comparative youngster which may be why he gave up so easily. Equally it could mean that he is just more interested in food. I have, though, seen a fairly large male making advances to a that year’s hoglet, where he was many times the size of her. It happened a few times on different nights (same two hogs). It was never going to get anywhere but that didn’t stop him. Maybe he was just practicing his courtship skills! She, interestingly, didn’t seem to mind.

The third video of the rolled up hog. He was probably rolled up out of sight. The ‘dominant’ hog will often go back and give him another biff, just to make sure he doesn’t unroll. They sometimes push them along for several yards, or until they reach an obstacle. That area doesn’t look like the sort of place where it would be easy to do that so he probably came to a halt there. Sometimes there is a female involved, but not always. Some males just seem to be fairly intolerant of having other males ‘in their space’. By that, I don’t mean any particular location, but just where they happen to be.

As I said above, my advice would be to move the camera a bit further back. But if you are really interested in watching hog behaviour, nothing beats watching yourself. Even with the camera further back the ‘action’ frequently goes out of range.

Good luck and hope you keep enjoying watching the hogs.

[DwarfHog]

How lovely!! I have loads of videos – have only been hog-watching since the beginning of May! but I am now trying to be a bit more selective about the ones I keep! I have a few ‘rolling and biffing” sequences and loads of them running straight across the viewfinder! Others are of them drinking – I have a large glazed plant pot saucer which they like to paddle in at the same time as drinking – sadly the last one gets quite a lot of grit! My camera is set up about 4ft away from the feeding station which is still a bit too close as much of the action takes place at the edge – apart from squeezing into the feeding station and/or drinking – but I don’t have any alternative location to put either the camera or the food without making the food a permanent garden ‘feature’ and I am sure the hogs are happier to have it all quite secluded. My cat did take some interest but we often get visits from a neighbours cat who just sniffs and then walks away – once she cant reach the food she looses interest!

[Author]

Posts