No, I do not need long johns – got them already. What I am talking about are those monoculars/binoculars/telescopes which shows the world in terms of the amount of infrared light everything emits, so that living things glow in the dark. I have lusted after such magic technology ever since I heard about its existence decades ago, because, through a new-found obsession with badgers, I had discovered the wonderful world of night-time wildlife.

I saw immediately how it would help navigate the darkness of a winter’s night and improve my perception of living things around me. Like stalking a badger ruffling through the autumn leaves for worms, which suddenly turned into a cow. Like stopping in the middle of a pitch black field on a moonless night, feeling that something was strange, when the feeling was resolved by a loud harrumph from the horse standing in front of me within touching distance. More importantly, I would be able to tell what was going on when watching badgers in the darkness of winter, but, of course, the cost of the technology was far more than I could afford

Instead, one of the most affordable ways of keeping track of wildlife at night was to use the fact that their eyes have a reflective layer at the back of the eyeball, so that when you shine a torch held near your head on them, the eyes reflect the light back.

I found that if you wore a head torch which cast a narrow beam, and if you lined up the beam with your binoculars, you could detect foxes, badgers, a/nd owls by their eyeshine from a couple of fields away. Badgers emerge from their setts at a time which can vary greatly in winter because the hours of darkness in which they can hunt are so long, so badger-watching at their sett is quite unrewarding. So I used to drive around in my car and scan the fields with my head torch and binoculars, looking for eyeshine.

I remember one magical night in January (years ago!), watching a pair of foxes on the other side of the field, obviously courting. All I could see were the two pairs of eyes, appearing and disappearing, dancing in the dark.

Youtube is a wonderful resource for keeping up with the developments in technology, and recently I watched some videos by Simon Eardsley and Mike Lane which showed the capabilities of the most recent thermal cameras and quick research showed that prices had dropped to a point where my pocket could afford one.

Watch this space!