# BWKm0 - Supermoon, Hedgehogs and "Naked" NocMig

Arriving home after my late shift, I was hoping to try to get some images of the full moon. A veil of high cloud was obscuring it, somewhat, and so I turned my attention to the hedgehog feeding station that we've established on the patio. First thing to turn up was a beautiful, sleek, vixen who came right up to the back door before wandering off, completely uninterested in the "Spikes Dinner" that was on offer. I had to just enjoy the spectacle as I daren't move and the camera was mounted on a tripod, pointed at the hedgehog food.

The second animal is the blurred shape in the top right hand corner of the image.

It was probably forty minutes later that the first hedgehog appeared, but quickly followed by a much larger individual who immediately took charge of the situation, chasing the smaller animal away in a rather brutal and noisy manner. My camera work was pitiful, as I attempted to manually focus in the dark. It is something I'm going to have a play around with over the Easter weekend. I'm well aware that there's much room for improvement.

The high cloud was starting to break up, allowing clear views of the spectacular "Pink Supermoon" - great stuff! Once again the limitations of my technique and lens quality combined to produce images which fall well short of those taken by far better camera users than I. However, whilst I was standing outside, waiting for the clouds to clear it was obvious that there were noises emanating from the surrounding darkness. The local gull colonies provided a constant procession of calls and shrieks, and I eventually nailed a flyover Coot when it decided to utter a burst of calls somewhere in the skies overhead! And then this happened! To my ears the call sounded slightly like a short contact call from a Black-headed Gull followed by two sharp chack - chack notes and was repeated some three seconds later as the unseen/un-id'd culprit moved west over the garden! Haven't got a clue and then it dawned on me what this "NocMig" technology is all about! You don't need to have a clue, there's a machine which does it for you and all of a sudden another bird call expert enters the fray. Me? I'll happily remain old school, listening for sounds which I can identify via previous experiences or having spent time studying audio recordings. As I'm sat at my laptop, typing this, a Whimbrel has just passed over, to the west, uttering that wonderful piping call as it did so - brilliant!
44 - Coot
45 - Whimbrel