Estonian text posted by the Animal of the Year Team 19.02.2018
Translation Liis
The winter weather has gathered the roe deer in herds again. While for a long time the deer stayed in the larger forest, and in pairs, then now they have again started visiting the field verge, and together. The forest offers food for a roe throughout the year. In the videos at 3:25 and 6:40 we see how the roe deer keep the underwood open. Some shrubs get quite visibly cut back. When you go in the forest for berry- and mushroom picking you often do not consider that without the deer, rabbits and elks it would be almost impossible to move in many places. The underwood would simply grow so densely. For the underwood to be cut back and clipped more evenly and in a wider area wolves and lynxes are needed that will not allow the animals to browse branches peacefully only in their favourite places, and will force the “forest gardeners” to move more. Everything is in balance.
The barking of foxes continues and the running trails go on. Probably because of this there has been no hare in recent camera records. They keep away from the foxes’ matings
Meanwhile the body also needs food and the fox too tasted the small amount of grain scattered behind the sedge tuft. To mark the food as its own it scraped together the remains after having eaten and squirted on them. At the end of the video the marten visited too.
In addition to the foxes’ matings, on sunny days the drumming of woodpeckers is already heard too.
The trail camera caught a wild boar herd. What a joy! In between there has been a long silence. The herd included a couple of large boars and a gang of jolly piglets. There were no young pigs. It was the offspring of a couple of strong specimens who had managed to get through the fever; animals of an intermediate age are missing.
The playfulness of the piglets is without bounds. The turmoil is a good sport, trims the body to become tough and strong.
In camera view the large sow lets her eyes go half-shut. The never-ending gambolling is tiresome in large portions. At the same time watchfulness is needed, in some evenings wolf howls were heard. Eyes close even standing up when all the motherly responsibility brings fatigue.
Such things happen too .
