Dear Readers, I had rather forgotten about my trail camera: when I downloaded the photos there were about 1400 shots, which is about six weeks’ worth. So I thought I’d give you a flavour of an average East Finchley evening. Eat your heart out, David Attenborough.

At 8.35 an example of Homo sapiens heads out to the shed to retrieve a frozen pint of milk, and to check on how the washing is drying (our dryer is in the shed. Go figure).

Finally at 10.21 Homo sapiens decides to bring the washing in and hang it up instead. Our dryer doesn’t like it when it’s cold, and as you can see it’s a chilly 27 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly -3 degrees Celsius)

At a quarter to 11 a fluffy cat wanders past to check on the handful of food we’ve left out for the fox. I suspect this is Cosmo, who lives on the next road but who has adopted half a dozen households in our road. He often stands on the pavement yowling and demanding some attention. Apparently his owner has four other cats, so maybe he feels he needs a little one-on-one time.

At 2 a.m. the first fox turns up. What a fine looking lad! Nothing mangey about this one.

And very thorough he is too!

I am a little puzzled about what’s happened to the time here, but not about the cat – he clearly came along after the fox, and has a wound on his right leg. He’s been around for a while, and the wound is clearing up so I think he’s had treatment. He’s a right old tom cat though – have a look at this enormous head, in a photo from the Whatsapp on the road. Unneutered toms often have  such miserable lives, getting into fights and making themselves generally unpopular.

No problems with this handsome fluffy cat doing the rounds at 4.25, though – looks like Cosmo making a return trip, though the family a few doors up also have a magnificent fluffy cat, so maybe it’s that cat. Whoever it is, it’s no wonder that there’s not usually any food left in the morning…