A few more pictures from the trail camera in a log pile in the garden. In the daytime it records only bank voles but at night the wood mice join in.
Then something I haven't seen before, a baby wood mouse. At the beginning there is an adult in the video as well so we can see how small the baby is.
Female wood mice produce four litters a year, each of 4-7 young, and females can breed in their first year. At this time of year there are about 40,000,000 wood mice in this country but the population will grow to about 120,000,000 by the end of the summer. Few of them will survive to next summer. I expect many are eaten by weasels, stoats, foxes, owls and domestic cats. About half are eaten by tawny owls. A pair of tawny owls raising young are likely to get through the equivalent of 4-5000 mice a year, although they obviously eat other things than mice. There are about 20,000 pairs of tawny owls in this country so they need a lot of mice. So far I have had only one fleeting glimpse of a common shrew on the camera so I may try a different location in the hope of getting a good picture.
It is two weeks since the cubs first appeared above ground. In the following week there were no sightings on the trail camera but in the past week there have been three, a few days apart. The sett is large and has many entrances, making it difficult to predict which one the mother will use. I don't have enough cameras to cover them all and some are not suitable for placing a camera. On the first of the latest sightings the cubs were making a lot of noise off stage left and another badger that heard them coming retreated into the sett. They look much bigger than two weeks ago and are probably now about 10 weeks old.
The second sighting was three days later in the early morning as they were off to bed. I expect they had been out all night with mother but they hadn't emerged from this entrance.
Later that day they came out at twilight (around 8.30pm) when the remaining natural light complements the infrared light from the camera to give a good picture with a good depth of field. They sat around for a minute or so while mother had a good scratch before they went off. The cubs are now steadier on their feet and are more inquisitive but they always stay within reach. They were silent on this occasion although the mother was still talking to them.
Expeditions for damselflies and dragonflies will be limited this season, at least for the next few weeks, but I got off to a good start yesterday. Only 1 km north of here, as the dragon flies, is Northumberland Wildlife Trust's Weetslade Country Park where I have arranged to survey dragonflies for a second year. The weather has been so good this week that I thought it was worth an early look yesterday to see what was about. And as I had hoped, large red damselflies were on the wing. The photo below shows the typical place to find them after emergence, in shrubs a few metres from the water, in sunshine and sheltered from the breeze.
This was the first one I saw, a teneral (freshly emerged) male.
All the others I photographed were female. This is another teneral.
These are slightly older, with better developed colour but they still have pale eyes which will turn red as they mature.
My plan is to repeat this survey every couple of weeks for the Wildlife Trust. It may be the only place I can look for dragonflies in the near future. Next month should see the emergence of other damselflies, chasers and perhaps one or two other dragonflies.
I eat a lot of apples. Working on the premise that an apple a day keeps the doctor away I reckon that three apples a day should be three times as good. And now that I know the bank vole likes apple cores I leave them all out to be eaten, rather than putting them in the compost. This is what happens.
A vole's life is short and busy and lived at high speed. This one is wondering why I haven't eaten another apple.
I don't know how many voles live in, or visit, this log pile but it is obviously every vole for himself.
It is over six months since the garden foxes featured on this blog. In the last few days the vixen has been turning up earlier (ie before my bedtime) but she has been shy and wary of the bright security light. In recent days she has become more used to it and is hungry as she obviously has cubs to feed.
Three nights ago the dog turned up as well but he sat at a respectful distance while she ate all the food, only coming over in the hope that she had missed something after she had moved on. For the past two nights she has arrived first but he has turned to join her (after she had eaten the chicken bits) and the two of them were unconcerned by the light. Here he is on the left as they eat the biscuits.
Here he is on the right.
This is the dog. I think it is a different animal from last year's dog fox who was greyer and had three distinctive white scars on his right back leg.
I think the vixen is probably different from last year as well(again redder and less grey) but it is difficult to be sure. A couple of videos from last night. The first shows the vixen finding the last bit of chicken skin and then eating some biscuits.
In the second she doesn't seem too thrilled when the dog turns up. Noice how her tail curls towards him - a warning to keep his distance and not to pinch all the food. When he goes round her her tail follows him to the other side to maintain the warning. I remember seeing that in the cubs from last year. The ear flattening is a defensive posture as well.
At present the foxes are arriving at about 9.30pm, after dark and after all the dog-walkers and joggers have disappeared. Their cubs are probably about two months old but won't yet be leaving the den. In the previous two years the cubs arrived in the garden in mid June. They have to be big enough to travel from wherever the den is and to climb over the rabbit fence to get into the garden. I'll keep watching and hope to post some photos if they arrive.
The trail camera near the badger sett has given some remarkably intimate views of badger behaviour. Badgers spend a lot of time scratching and grooming themselves but there are areas they can't reach. For those they rely on fellow clan members in a process known as social grooming or allo-grooming. The process is initiated by one badger and only continues if it is reciprocated. Unlike some other animals such as primates, badgers don't score points for offering grooming and don't do it to improve their social standing within the clan. These three itchy badgers were engaged in self-grooming and allo-grooming after emerging from the sett and before going off foraging..
The episode went on for several minutes. Here is a short video of the highlights.
And here is the complete episode. See if you can watch it without scratching.
Here is a photo I haven't posted before although it isn't of one of my present sparrowhawks. I remember being pleased with it at the time and I think I must have been saving it for something. Now it has just been published in the latest edition of Nature North East, the bulletin of the Natural History Society of Northumbria.
Wow. Earlier than I had expected, the first sight of new cubs. The camera has been in place for weeks and this is their first time above ground. Mother came out first to make sure the coast was clear before the two cubs followed her. One retreated to the sett after a couple of minutes but the other one was keen to explore until it was shepherded back inside. The cubs are very noisy and very unsteady on their feet.
I think this is the most exciting sequence I have had yet on my trail cameras. I have made a short montage of highlights which you can watch here. Be sure to have the sound on. The mother's vocalisation is known as churring and the cubs' as chittering.
I have also uploaded the whole episode which is almost ten minutes long. The camera records only 20s at a time at night so there a few slightly jerky joins but overall it did amazingly well.
This film was made from 29 consecutive short clips joined together. It took longer to upload (>3h) on my "superfast" broadband than it did to make. The camera is still in place so I hope to have more pictures of the cubs to share soon.
Now that we are all more or less confined to barracks it is a good opportunity for me to do a bit of trail camera work in the garden. The northern part of my garden, about ⅓ of an acre, is a small copse of mature trees which is left wild for the benefit of whatever lives there. Over the years I have built several log piles and brash piles, some of which are 25 years old and largely disintegrated. They house many invertebrates and provide homes for birds and small mammals.
The Longworth trap, as you can't guess from its name, was designed and developed by two Oxford scientists named Chitty and Kempson in 1949. Its design hasn't changed significantly since then and it remains the standard live-capture small mammal trap for study of mice, voles and shrews. The nest box contains dry grass for bedding and bait - usually a mixture of sunflower seeds, apple, carrot and casters (blowfly pupae normally used for coarse fishing). The casters are for shrews which can consume their own weight in food each day. It is important to inspect the trap regularly to release the captive animal and to provide enough food until it is released. The nest box is connected to a detachable tunnel containing a treadle which closes the door behind the animal when activated. In the past I have caught bank voles, wood mice, common shrews, a pigmy shrew and a water shrew in the garden.
I mostly monitor the small mammals in the garden just with a trail camera but decided to combine it with a Longworth trap to show the latter in action. When I use Longworth traps in the local nature reserve I usually set them without prebaiting as the capture rate is high. However, the trap can be fixed open with a prebait catch to allow the animals to come and go and get used to it. Here the prebait catch is set and you can see the bank vole is happy to sit in the tunnel while eating.
Wood mice, on the other hand don't eat in but prefer takeaways. They like sunflower seeds best but will eat apple.
Banks voles are also rather choosy and prefer apple to carrot.
The first time I set the trap to video it the bank vole had pushed some diced carrot under the treadle which made it difficult to trigger, although it did work in the end.
Two days later I tried again. The bank vole (probably the same one) was more wary but in the end it couldn't resist the smell of fresh apple.
I have put the trap away now and will use the trail camera to capture more videos of the animals in a more natural setting!
The current restrictions on movement mean that it is less easy to check on my trail cameras. When I am after otters I try to get the cameras as close to the water as possible to get better pictures. I thought if it rained a lot it would be difficult if I couldn't rescue the cameras so have set them up to keep an eye on some badgers.
Badgers are very sociable animals and live in family groups (clans) so I was very pleased to have more than one in shot (something that rarely happens when I put down peanuts on a trail because badgers usually forage alone). In this video there are two. Watch with the sound on so you can hear their contact noises. Badgers make quite a wide range of sounds - I think this one is known as whickering. This montage is of three consecutive clips but the camera takes a short break every 20s (usually for 1-2s) so I am not sure that it is always the same two badgers.
And then three. More whickering and they rub against each other to spread the family scent - known as allomarking.
Badgers are clean and houseproud animals and change their bedding regularly. Here is a rather tousled badger (probably mother!), dragging out the used bedstraw. All this makes it easy to see which sett entrances are in use.
Depending on the restrictions I hope to have more videos in a few weeks' time, and possibly the first sighting of this year's cubs. The cubs will have been born a couple of months ago and usually appear above ground at about 12 weeks of age.
This is a short video from last year. I was surprised to find I haven't posted it here before but I expect I was distracted by all the fox and otter activity last summer. Last spring I found gap in a pile of stones in the copse that was regularly used by small mammals. The trail camera recorded bank vole, common shrew and water shrew, all of which I have posted before, but also this wood mouse. Wood mice are mostly nocturnal and this recording was made during the night. The surprising thing is that the mouse ignored the sudden bright white LED lights from the Wingscapes BirdCam Pro and carried on eating. More recently I posted another nocturnal video of a wood mouse recorded on the same camera and again the mouse ignored the lights.
