A couple of weeks back a wombat dug into the poulty paddock. Its tough digging, through compacted river stones, and not something a fox or cat can do. But the fox or cat can use the wombats hole to get in and wreak havoc. Which is what happened.

Hole fixed, problem disappears. Until the wombat does it again. We've been here long enough to know its a seasonal thing. It happens four or five times each year around now. So, twice a day I drive around the paddock, running my eye along the ground/fence meeting point as we drive, looking for the next incursion. It happened when I was in Melbourne, but I am so used to the process I already had a tub of rocks ready to go and my wife was able to quickly make the repairs.

But the last week we've had one bird get killed each night. No wombat hole that I can find.

We have a trail camera, which I use to track night predators. Its sort of useful, but the perimeter of the paddock is more than 500metres, and a squashed hexagon shape, so I usually don't place the camera along the right fence. I fished it out...and its dead. Can't get it to work....no help there!

I decided this wasn't a fox. A fox would kill everything it could get hold of. All our chickens would go in one night, not just one. And usually the fox takes away the chicken, doesn't stay and consume it onsite and leave half the corpse.

So I started thinking about how a cat would get in, and ended up looking at trees growing along the fenceline. Maybe a cat could climb a tree, walk out along a narrow branch and drop into the paddock. Foxes are agile, but the branches available wouldn't take their weight. But a cat....

There is such a cat working our turf at the moment. I've seen it, the dogs have chased it, but we haven't managed to apprehend it. I've had baited livetraps out, and one of them was emptied and triggered. But no cat. I pruned the trees.

Then, yesterday, we drove over to feed them in the morning. There was something going on....the geese were all crammed into their compound, and only came out when we showed up. We fed them and started the perimeter check. My Kelpie, Fry, suddenly leapt out of the moving buggy and flung himself over the edge of the mining cavity, out of sight. As he disappeared, from across the other side of the lakepit, an adult eagle flapped up and flew off. The eagle flew a few hundred metres and perched at the very top of a massive, 80+ pine tree in my neighbor's paddock, to watch us.

Looking over the edge of the mining pit, the carnage of a goose kill site was very obvious, and Fry was centred on it, inspecting the evidence.

Oh dear. Hard to prevent an eagle from killing the geese.

The good news it that by chance I noticed a flaw in the mesh of the fox-proof fence. I've been checking the ground level. Wrong area of focus. The hole was up at almost waist height.

The fence is highly strained wire, barbed and electric, with heavy-gauge chicken wire joined on. For some reason, perhaps a shifting post, the chicken wire had loosened, as if it was suddenly 300mm too long. That slack created a shelf that a small animal, like a cat, could climb up, just ducking under the outlying electric line. I clipped it all up tight again, and for the first time in a week there was not a dead chicken/goose corpse waiting for me when I went out at breakfast.

But that afternoon, half the geese were out of the goose paddock. For them to fly out means something chased them. I expect it was the eagle again.

I've ordered more cameras.