In Happy Mount Park this morning, we met a man from Pinewood Avenue, Bare, who showed us footage from the CCTV cameras at his home which work day and night on movement censor.
Last week, at 1.30 a.m. on Thursday morning, the cameras caught a movement in the street outside. It was an otter running along the pavement. After it had passed out of view, a fox appeared over the garden wall, looked round and trotted off in the opposite direction to the otter.
Why would an otter be running round a housing estate? Pinewood Avenue must be very near the line of the old Bare Beck, which can still be seen in the Windrush/Betony estate but then goes into an underground culvert. (The Beck used to cross Bare Lane at the Hest Bank Road/Mayfield Road junction.)
Foxes are now quite a normal sight in Bare. I was awakened at 3 a.m. a couple of nights ago by a fox barking and was able to stand at our window and watch it running around Bare Avenue for several minutes before it was spooked by a taxi driving in.
On another shot from the camera, a mouse ran out of cover to pick up food below a bird table and then rushed back into cover as a sparrowhawk swooped down in a failed attempt to take it.
Jeff B
