News from WeaselCam

I have rabbits in the garden, which is a problem as they tend to eat everything and I am worried they will eat the meadow.  Some are small(ish) so I set a trap, baited with carrot, hoping to catch one.  When I looked through the kitchen window the next morning I could see the trap was empty but as I watched a weasel appeared.  It went through the camera box and as it emerged I was willing it not to go into the rabbit trap.  But being curious by nature of course it did.  I went out to release it within a minute or two and it didn't seem distressed, just trying to work out how to escape.  Once I had opened the door it ran, but only as far as the camera box where it turned round to have a good look at me.  Even when it had gone through to the other side it turned round to check on me.  Then I picked up the trap and walked back to the house but as I did so the weasel was still watching me from the other side of the drive.  It didn't seem spooked and was back to the camera box twice that afternoon.

Here's the video.  Listen after the weasel leaves the camera box and you can hear the trap snap shut.  There was a wren in the hedge just above, calling alarm.

So a lucky close encounter (for me).  I won't try the trap again but I still hope to get rid of the rabbits - a job for the stoat perhaps?  It is still around but usually avoids the camera box and is almost too quick for the other camera.

The weasel in the trap was male - broad and muscular.  I am learning to recognise them as they are turning up fairly regularly on the cameras.  Here is a female, smaller and much slimmer than the male.  The Mammal Society website says she weighs 55-70g (only twice as much as a vole or mouse) and he is 105-130g.

And, for comparison, here is the male.

I also have another new camera box.  This one is made so the camera can see through both entrances.  It is wider than the others but also shorter, which creates a problem with the camera's limited field of view.  The solution is to use a clip-on wide angle lens plus a close-focus (+0.5) lens, all held together with Blu-tack and gaffer tape.

I heard a mouse in the attic so I set a trap and caught the mouse.  I put it in the new camera box, hoping to get a video of the weasel collecting the mouse.  However, it was no real surprise that the weasel came in so quickly that it was already turning to leave with the mouse by the time the camera was recording.

Here's the video, not quite as good as I had hoped.

These videos were edited with the help of a new AI programme to improve image quality.  It certainly improves them here and it will be interesting to see if the quality is maintained once they have been compressed by YouTube/Blogger.  One downside is that the file size is massively increased and with my BT Superslow Broadband it has taken nearly nine hours to upload these four short videos.  I hope you enjoyed them. 

Unusual garden birds

The pond in my meadow is just entering its third season.  It was made for wildlife, particularly dragonflies, but this wasn't quite the wildlife I had in mind.  Last week I looked out of the window to see two drake mallards walking along the drive.  I picked up a camera and when I opened the door I could see a female swimming around in the pond.  At first one of the drakes was trying to keep the other one away from her but soon they were all in the water.  The female didn't seem interested in the drakes and was either feeding in the pond or falling asleep.  Here are a few photos.

On balance I don't think the ducks will be good for the pond, so if they return I shall discourage them.

News from StoatCam

I now don't know whether to call this WeaselCam or StoatCam as both weasels and stoats are turning up regularly.  Perhaps SmallMustelidCam?  The camera position within the box seems a bit better now but the camera's trigger time remains an issue.*

On one exciting day this week two stoats and a weasel all visited in the same morning, the stoats only 10 minutes apart.  The second one was paler with partial ermine colouring and was noticeably smaller so I think the first was a male and the second female.  I now know it was the female whose partially white tail showed briefly on a camera last month.  This is the male.

And this is the female.

The video shows them first in real time and then with two zoomed-in slow motion replays. Unfortunately neither stoat went into the box so the inner camera wasn't triggered by either of them.  I suspect the male left a scent mark as he turned round in the pipe because the female seemed very interested in the scent.

I read a report from Ireland that showed that stoats were only detected by the Mostela camera 50% of the time compared with an external camera (Croose E et al. 2021).  And research from the Netherlands which found that a 10cm entrance pipe was significantly better than an 8cm pipe (Mos J & Hofmeester TR. 2020).  The pipe these two stoats went into is 16cm but narrows to 10cm inside so perhaps that put them off.

On a previous occasion a stoat (I think the larger male) went into the box so quickly that he was already behind the camera by the time it was recording.  (I wonder if this is a tactic to try to ambush any prey that might be inside.)  The video shows him running out.  The outside camera also missed him going in but did see him exploring the outside.

And here's the weasel visit.  I like weasels because they often run in and out more than once which gives the cameras a better chance.  This time the inner camera missed the first pass but did catch the weasel the second time.  There is a puzzling distinctive straight-edged mark on the flank and judging by the under-chin markings (gular spots) this is a weasel I haven't seen before.

A couple of days ago the cameras made two recordings of weasels within two hours.  I suspect these are two different animals although it is difficult to be sure.  I think the first one is smaller so they are likely to be female and male.  The first one didn't go right inside and wasn't detected by the inside camera.  The second one went through so quickly that it wasn't seen either.

The recordings also give us the opportunity to compare the size of a (male) stoat and a (presumably female) weasel.  I posted this picture on the Mammal Society Facebook page where it attracted a lot of interest.  As above, the pipe's internal diameter is 160mm.

Here is another version - male stoat, male weasel and female weasel.  Unfortunately the female stoat didn't stand up in the same way as she came out so I can't add her in.  I hope she'll be back to pose properly.

* All trail cameras have a "trigger time" - the delay between detection and the start of recording. Trigger times are shorter for photos (typically ～100ms) than for videos (～400ms).  The target also has to move in one of the detection zones - the trigger sensor doesn't "see" the same area as the camera lens.  In a Browning, which I use and which has about the fastest video trigger time, the three detection zones are in the centre and at either side.  I suspect that my camera position in this new box means that an animal in the pipe is in between the centre and side trigger zones, thus delaying a response.  I'll have to try adjusting the position a bit to see if I can improve things without spoiling the view.

1.  Croose E et al. (2021)  Mammal Research  https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-021-00598-z

2.  Mos J & Hofmeester TR. (2020)  Mammal Research  https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-020-00513-y

More Fox News

In yesterday's post I said I hadn't seen a fox for weeks until the new pregnant vixen turned up the night before.  Not wanting to miss out, the dog fox was here by 8 last night.

He has been in the wars since I last saw him.  He has a nasty wound on his right temple although it looks as though it will heal.

I suppose one drawback of being the alpha male is that you have to fight to keep your place.  It will certainly make him even easier to recognise.

This is his good side.

He didn't look up much but made sure he found every last peanut.

Once they were all gone he sat down for a scratch

and then trotted away.  If both foxes are now going to turn up reliably I'll have to put out a bit more food for them.

Fox News

I have seen very little of the foxes over the winter, partly because I probably spend less time watching for them but mostly because they don't often turn up before I have gone to bed.  I am still putting out food regularly and it is almost always taken.  There is also a rabbit in the garden so I am keen that the foxes turn up regularly, hoping that one of them might even catch its own dinner.

Last night I was lucky and this fox arrived at about 9pm.  It is a puzzle, however, as it isn't one I have seen before.  It knew exactly where the food was and I could see at once that it is pregnant, so a vixen, but the one I thought was the new alpha female last November had a bright white tail tag, long black socks, and was very dark around the eyes.  This one is paler and has a small dark grey tail tag and shorter socks.

Assuming this is a new resident vixen, she is the third in a year on the patch and the fourth in 18 months (that sounds a bit like Prime Ministers!).  It looks as though her cubs will be born soon but it will be a few months before they are old enough to visit the garden.

Developing WeaselCam

I have been experimenting again.  One of the limitations of the Mostela design of the trail camera box for weasels is that the two entrance holes are opposite each other and the weasel often dashes straight across in a blur.  It occurred to me that offsetting the entrances in some way might make visitors pause or look around so I built a new box.  This one is made from a very long under-bed storage box, the extra length giving more flexibility with the camera position.  The camera now looks straight down one entrance and the other is to the side, as before, with a small rock in between.  This is how it looks.

And this is a phone view of what the camera might see.

I have camouflaged the box a bit more than before so that it might look a bit more "natural" from a weasel or stoat's point of view.

It was no surprise that the first visitor to the new box was a wood mouse.  With the new view we are able to see it coming and going.  The third mouse seems to have the right idea.

Next up was a bank vole, good to see as there have been very few on the cameras in recent weeks.  The population is at its lowest at this time of year as quite a lot have been eaten by weasels, stoats, foxes, kestrels, owls, etc.

And best of all, within three days, a weasel, obviously intrigued by the new box.

This was one visit, all recorded within 40 seconds.  It is fun to see what is happening outside.

There is work to do on the camera position and angle, and perhaps a bit on the interior design, but I think it has promise.

Planning ahead for the coming summer, I have also greatly extended the weasel wall which is between the copse and the meadow.  Is is now higher than before and is 10m long.  The original had a nest box built into it and I have put in another one in the new extension.

This is made from a small Ikea storage box, a bit larger than a shoe box, with a weasel-sized entrance hole.  I have no way of knowing whether the weasels were using the original and the same will apply to this one which is now buried within the wall.  Robert Fuller, the source of inspiration for this, had lighting and live-streamed TV cameras in his but that is a bit beyond me. However, I will put up a couple of trail cameras in the summer to watch the wall like last year. This is how the new wall looks, built with lots of gaps and nooks and crannies.

And lastly a bonus video.  This camera was set up elsewhere to look for otters and recorded a frustrating near miss which was lucky all the same.   A weasel was hunting right at the edge of the frame and made a kill just out of view.  The main image is cropped and there is a more heavily cropped slow-motion replay ay the end.  You can just see the weasel roll briefly into view with the wood mouse it has just killed.