SmallMammalCam

This is National Mammal Week so it is a good time to show a few mammal pictures.  When I wrote about the small mammal camera box a few weeks ago it was about 5m inside the small copse in my garden.  The camera was seeing bank voles, wood mice and shrews every day/night.  After that I moved it about 10m, so it was now 5m into the meadow.  The clientele changed immediately and the wood mice stopped coming.  The bank voles and shrews still turned up regularly but the new arrival was a field vole.  The noise on the video is rain on the roof of the box.

The next video shows the difference between a bank vole and a field vole.  The latter is larger, greyer, has a shorter tail and has flatter, furrier ears.

Bank voles usually visit the box one at a time.  If there is more than one it can lead to a bit of conflict.

The other regular visitor was a common shrew.  It is hyperactive compared with the voles - the video is at normal speed.

I then moved the box back to the edge of the meadow and the copse and the wood mice immediately reappeared.  Being mainly nocturnal they show up in infrared recordings.

I was surprised that the mice don't want to venture even 5m into the meadow, and that the field voles won't go 5m into the wood.  The bank voles and shrews are happy wherever the box is.

The main reason for having the small mammal camera box is to try to film a weasel but so far no joy.  I have seen the weasel this week near the gate so I have moved the box over there and fitted larger entrance pipes in the hope that might entice it in.  We'll see.