Video project reveals urban foxes as night-time visitors to Luton school grounds

Paul Hammond - a local Science teacher - has always had a passion to explore local wildlife and he founded the Friends of Bradgers Hill 9 years ago to support the appreciation of plants and animals on our local examples of chalk grasslands.

Supported by a grant from the Bedfordshire and Luton Community Fund, Paul has bought ten trailcameras that shoot 15s of video whenever an object passes in front of it. This makes it ideal for use in monitoring wildlife, particularly when it contains a SIM card and can send the video instantly to the user's smartphone.

Paul recruited 8 schools : Denbigh High School, Bushmead Primary School, Chantry Primary School, Icknield High School, Someries Primary School, Challney Boys School, and Chiltern Academy and in November worked with small groups of students to set up a camera in a suitable location on their school field in the run up to Christmas.

During this time, Paul captured many images of urban foxes for every one of the participating schools and found out that the schools' site managers were often the ones who saw them first thing in the morning or just before locking up in the evening. Foxes pose no danger to the children as they are all carefully tucked up inside their dens during the day.

After Christmas Paul set up all ten cameras on the nearby Bradgers Hill in the Bushmead area of town and over the next 16 weeks captured extensive footage of a wide range of mammals including badgers, pheasants, Muntjac deer, hares and fox cubs.

In March, he held an event for schools in the Bushmead Community Centre where he gave a talk on the mammals seen to date followed by a guided nature walk on the hill.

At Easter the footage on the hills was completed and Paul commenced a series of assemblies to show the collated videos, which is presently being compiled into a 12 minute film with 2 students from Chiltern Academy providing the narration.

On Monday, June 24th, there is a "premiere" event when the film will be shown to the local Bushmead community in addition to all of the participating schools. This will also be accompanied by a midsummer evening walk on the Hill.

Paul comments: "It was fascinating to see the technology work so well and for it to reveal so many schools being visited by foxes, who have shown themselves to be very adaptable to the urban environment.

"We were also overjoyed to capture so much candid footage of wildlife on Bradgers Hill and in the coming months we are looking to use this to spread appreciation and understanding of the countryside on our doorsteps."