Trail camera technology is rapidly advancing and quickly becoming more affordable, allowing anyone to view the wildlife visiting their gardens. During the first half of this year, we have had four new models released on our website boasting updated and improved specifications.
Browning and Bushnell are renowned trail camera brands used by researchers, conservationists and amateur naturalists around the world. Both brands offer high-quality, durable units at a range of price-points.
2021 has brought three new models of Browning camera, named the ‘Elites’. All three are continuations of previous series. The Recon Force and Spec Ops Elite HP4 are similar to the older ‘Edge’ models. The principal change is the addition of high power LEDs which have increased the night time range and image quality. The two cameras are essentially the same design, however the Spec Ops offers no-glow flash rather than the Recon Force’s low-glow.
Browning Recon Force Elite HP4
• High power LEDs
• 22MP images, 1920 x 1080 HD video (60 frames per second)
• 0.1s – 0.7s adjustable trigger speed
• Low-glow infrared flash
• 5cm colour viewing screen
• High power LEDs
• 22MP images, 1920 x 1080 HD video (60 frames per second)
• 0.1s – 0.7s adjustable trigger speed
• No-glow infrared flash
• 5cm colour viewing screen
The Command Ops Pro, Browning’s entry level camera, has been replaced by the Command Ops Elite. Despite coming in at a lower price point than other cameras in the range it boasts some fantastic features, including a faster trigger speed than its predecessor. If a colour viewing screen is not an essential feature for you, this camera will allow you to take images and videos at a significantly more affordable price.
• 18MP images, 1280 x 720 HD video (30 frames per second)
• 0.3s trigger speed
• Low-glow infrared flash
• Black and green text screen
Similarly, Bushnell released a new entry-level camera this year. The Prime offers a similar spec to the Command ops, but with significantly higher megapixel images. For more information on this camera and to see it in action, please read our ‘In the Field’ blog post.
• 24MP images, 1280 x 720 HD video
• 0.3s trigger speed
• Low-glow infrared flash
• Black and white text screen
Explore the complete range of trail cameras on our website or take a look at our Watching Wildlife guide on how to choose the right trail camera.
In his latest book, 
shapes, forms and colours of the birds. They were so very different to the birds I was used to seeing in the Somerset countryside around our home. After that, every now and again I’d see footage of hummingbirds on wildlife documentaries, and began to appreciate further just how remarkable they were – what Tim Dee described as ‘strange birds: not quite birds or somehow more than birds, birds 2.0, perhaps’.
There were plenty of other moments that I’ll hold in my heart, and they don’t all involve the iconic, rare species. One such was watching Golden-tailed Sapphires, a hummingbird that looks as if it’s been dipped in rainbows, feeding in a clearing in the immediate aftermath of a heavy rain shower. As the sun broke through the dripping vegetation and steaming air we were suddenly surrounded by myriad small rainbows through which the birds were flying. That moment was ephemeral, over almost as soon as it began, but it’s etched in my memory forever. 
I found myself asking myself that very question as my journey into their world unfolded… Hummingbirds certainly seem to touch something deep inside us. They featured in the mythology of the Aztecs; inspired the most dramatic of all of the immense geoglyphs carved into the desert floor by the Nazca; appear in renowned art and literature; and, to this day, are singled out for particular love by those whose gardens they frequent, people who would not necessarily identify themselves as birders.
Inevitably there were some logistical challenges to contend with, not least having to reacquaint myself with horse-riding after a decades-long and deliberate avoidance of it! There were a couple of close encounters with large predators that were, in hindsight, more alarming than they felt at the time – as a naturalist, I was thrilled to get (very) close views of a puma… But perhaps the most challenging moment of all was landing in Bolivia at the very moment the country was taking to the streets to protest the outcome of a recent presidential election. There was an incident at a roadblock manned by armed men that was genuinely scary, with an outcome that hung in the balance for a terrifying instant, and could easily have ended badly.
I sometimes think there’s almost too much optimism expressed when talking about conservation challenges anywhere in the world – a narrative that suggests “if we only care enough, the [insert iconic species name here] can be saved”. And to a degree, that’s good – we’ve got to have hope, as the alternative is too dreadful to countenance – but given our impact to date, and in an uncertain future where the effects of climate change are still unfolding and will continue for many decades to come, to name just the biggest of the mounting pressures on the natural world, I’m not sure that I do feel terribly optimistic, least of all for those hummingbird species that have very localized populations, or depend upon very specific habitats. They’re undeniably vulnerable. But like Fox Mulder, 
As recently featured on 
photographing and surveying insects. I learned about the insects, watched them and counted the sheer number of species, and realised that no one else had actually surveyed a small urban park extensively. The book came about as I wanted to show people what was living in the bushes and to put Peckham on the entomological map!
and usually open 24 hours – but there is no reason why we can’t include habitats for our wildlife. A simple solution would be to leave areas un-mowed to grow wild. In the parks of my local area in London, large swathes of grasses and flowers have been left to mature and people have been really receptive to it. I think we are finally moving away from the Victorian ideal of neat and tidy!
For nearly thirty years now I have been going to stay in a small house at the head of a bay on the west coast of Scotland. It is somewhere my wife’s family have been going for generations and now our children and grandchildren love it too. It has everything you might long for from a place like that: cliffs, woods, waterfalls, a dark beach made of basalt sands, a lighthouse, a ruined castle, stories, beauty, birds, fish; but one thing it did not have because of the geology, was a rockpool. For years I have dreamed of making one – a place of stillness set in the tide, and this book is the story of how I made three of them in different parts of the bay; one dug in with a pickaxe; one made by damming a narrow exit to the sea from a hollow so that the dam held the pool behind it; and one by making a circular wall low down in the intertidal.
And so that provided the model – see what was there and look carefully at it. Of course, books like mine are entirely parasitic on the work of many generations of biologists and that too turned out to be the pattern. Watch the sand hoppers and then read about them. Read about them and see how much of what I read I could find on the shore. With prawns, winkles, shore crabs, anemones, limpets, sea-stars, urchins and barnacles, I simply oscillated between the pools and my books: what was there? What had people discovered about them? How did they interact? What were the principles governing their presence or absence? And with all of that came the repeated and slightly sobering realisation that unless I knew to look for something it was very difficult to see it was there. Mysteriously, we are often blind to what is in front of our eyes.
stages, can recognise the movements and timings of the tides. That sea anemones can identify other sea anemones that are not their relations and effectively destroy them. That prawns have an imagination – that might sound like too much, but it has been shown that they can remember past pain and project it into present and future anxieties. Anxiety is different from fear; it is a fear of what might be there. In other words a prawn can think beyond its present reality.
garden whose walls are dissolved twice a day, an enclosure that becomes part of the general world with every high tide. That ambiguity is what entranced me, the sense of its being a micro-ocean, a micro-arcadia, a micro-laboratory in which all kinds of intimacies and precision in natural beings can be witnessed an inch beneath your nose.
