When a branch on our plum tree was so heavily laden it broke off, I left some of the plums on the fallen branch and set up my camera-trap, leaving it undisturbed for two nights. The results caused much excitement when I retrieved the card and slotted it into my laptop - plum raiders included confident badgers, suspicious foxes and a roe deer in the dark, and various garden birds during the day - not bad for garden wildlife in Stroud.
This video, No.73 to #BrightenYourDay in #Covid19 #lockdown, shows some of the behaviour recorded - the first night was dry, the second rainy, with a brief appearance of a jay during the day in between, which I included so you can see the scene in daylight.
Inside each plum is the stone, which of course is a seed, and these animals chomp and swallow the whole fruit, thereby acting as seed dispersal agents. Right under the parent plant is not a good place to for a seedling to germinate, so plants benefit from animals ingesting their seeds and depositing them far away the next day in their dung - which decomposes into excellent fertiliser. Just as in the tropics, primates, elephants, toucans and tapirs are the #GardenersoftheForest, in temperate woodlands in UK and Europe, #badgers, #foxes, #deer and #jays are among the most important #SeedDispersalAgents, sowing the seeds of the trees of tomorrow (not only trees, brambles, grasses and herbs too). Protecting them, and their ability to play this role in their natural habitat, is an essential part of our efforts to prevent dangerous climate change and halt biodiversity loss.