{"id":29623,"date":"2021-09-09T12:13:09","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T11:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/?p=29623"},"modified":"2023-02-25T13:38:36","modified_gmt":"2023-02-25T13:38:36","slug":"return-of-the-falmer-rats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/return-of-the-falmer-rats\/","title":{"rendered":"Return of the Falmer Rats"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s now several years since I posted about the rat population at Falmer Pond. This is partly because I visit the pond much less frequently these days, but also because for a period the rat population had been brought under control. It may well be that the pandemic has affected maintenance around the pond (and I certainly didn’t notice as many ‘do not feed’ signs around). Anyway, when I visited yesterday, in blazing sunshine, the rats were active and (photographically) a delight.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Brown rat at Falmer Pond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Brown rat at Falmer Pond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Most of the time they stayed well covered in the shrubs and roots overhanging the edge of the pond, which didn’t make for the easiest photography. I cranked up the ISO to 1600 and kept the lens wide open to ensure an adequate shutter speed. They were also rather cautious so that any movement on my part sent them scurrying for cover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I left them to it for a while and wandered round the pond, spotting a lone heron high on the tree on the central island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Grey Heron<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The walk did the trick. When I got back to the ratting area, some of them had braved the more open space leading to the path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brown rats at Falmer Pond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Brown rat at Falmer Pond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If the weather holds up I’ll be going back to see how they’re getting on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 1DX Mark II and EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s now several years since I posted about the rat population at Falmer Pond. This is partly because I visit the pond much less frequently these days, but also because for a period the rat population had been brought under control. It may well be that the pandemic has affected maintenance around the pond (and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[781,3],"tags":[1183],"class_list":["post-29623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rats","category-wildlife","tag-rat","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30401,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29623\/revisions\/30401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}