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Thursday, 4 September 2025
Scarcely believable
Thursday, 28 August 2025
More action on WeaselCam
It has been a quiet summer but now things are warming up in the trail camera box. After the female weasel moved her kits I was hopeful of seeing her again. She made two brief visits to the box in one day, followed by the stoat the next day, so I put a mouse in the top pipe as a lure. When the weasel came back she could obviously smell the mouse but to my frustration, and presumably hers, she couldn't find it and eventually gave up.
A couple of days later I put in another mouse, this time in one of the bottom pipes, and it was found straightaway, but by a different weasel, this one a male. Notice how he immediately checks the coast is clear and then looks for a second mouse before taking it away. He didn't go far because he was back 20 seconds later for another look round.
And he was back again four more times in the next 20 minutes, obviously convinced I had hidden another mouse somewhere.
The size difference between these two weasels isn't obvious at a glance because they are so active but here is a side by side view of the female (L) and male (R) searching the bottom left pipe.
Thursday, 21 August 2025
A stoat visits WeaselCam
Two days after my last post on the weasel moving her family a stoat again appeared in the garden and this time came into the weasel box and was captured on camera. I had wondered if the weasel might have been provoked into the move by a stoat and I think this makes it more likely. A stoat would be a threat to a weasel.
Stoats are generally reluctant to enter camera boxes, including mine, even though mine has extra large outside entrance pipes (160mm). This one I think is female because of its size - a male would be even larger.
Saturday, 16 August 2025
Mrs Weasel moves house (and takes the family)
Monday, 11 August 2025
Roe deer on the otter bridge
The trail cameras are set primarily to keep an eye on what the otters get up to but they record whatever comes into view. At the moment fewer than 1% of recordings are of otters. Non-target captures in late spring and early summer were mainly of young birds, especially water rails, moorhens and mallards, but there are plenty of mammals as well. They now outnumber the birds and in perhaps ascending order of size they are common shrew, water shrew, bank vole, wood mouse, field vole, brown rat, grey squirrel, red fox, badger and roe deer.
Deer aren't the most exciting subjects on trail camera because they usually don't do much but the kids are charming. They are now a couple of months old and still have some of their camouflage but they find the bridge a bit of a challenge because it is built rather like a cattle grid. If you have dainty hooves it requires a bit of concentration to get across safely. Here are mother and the twins all managing easily this time.
Here one of the kids has discovered the camera.
Here is one of the twins showing how not to do it. After falling through a couple of times it came back to have think but realised it was left behind and had to try again. You can hear it squeaking as it set off a second time.
The last video shows one of the kids on the bridge. As I said, roe deer don't do much but it is quite relaxing to watch if you have a couple of minutes to spare.
Monday, 4 August 2025
The Greater White-toothed Shrew
The camera box was placed in a scruffy area close to a hedgerow in Elemore Park, only a mile or so from Easington Lane where the original Greater White-toothed Shrew was first recorded. Although it is within Sunderland metropolitan borough it is closer to Durham. A few interesting observations about the recordings: all were in daylight and Greater White-toothed Shrews are known to be mainly diurnal in habit; there were a few Common Shrew recordings but no Pygmy Shrews, a few Field Voles but no Bank Voles; and no Wood Mice, which is a surprise. I had enough videos of Common and Greater White-toothed Shrews to make this short slow-motion comparison video.
I am grateful to Anthony Hindmarch, the Elemore Park manager, for the opportunity to site my camera - we were primarily looking for weasels and voles so at least we found a field vole. I hope to see more Greater White-toothed Shrew videos when I next check the camera and I'll post an update here.
Monday, 28 July 2025
News from OtterCam
OtterCam is in a quiet phase after a very exciting winter and spring. The previous cubs were last seen on 02 May and their mother was seriously courting the dog otter on 04 May. Courtship is said to last three or four days and an otter pregnancy lasts 63 days so if all went according to plan it could be that new cubs were born about two weeks ago. Even so, we won't expect to see them on camera until some time in October.
The cameras have been keeping an eye on things and recorded this video of the female at the end of June, possibly ten days before cubs were due. Otters have two or three cubs which are born at about 13cm in length weighing a bit over 100g (3½oz). So, given a female otter's size (6000g) and body shape, I don't know whether we would be able to tell if this one was pregnant.
The next video was recorded 20 days later, so possibly 10 days or so after giving birth. Again it is very difficult to tell from the video but I just wonder if there is evidence she might be feeding cubs.
In the following week the female turned up four times at this camera point to leave a scent mark. In the same time the dog otter went past just once so I expect he is elsewhere much of the time.
Tuesday, 22 July 2025
Micro ladybirds
The ladybirds we are all used to seeing are often red with black spots, sometimes black with red spots and occasionally yellow with black spots, all shiny. There is another group of smaller ladybirds which are mostly unspotted and not shiny, known as inconspicuous ladybirds or micro ladybirds. They are more difficult to find and often go unnoticed. In the past few days I have come across four of them and have been learning how to photograph them. The most recent find was Scymnus nigrinus which is rare with only a handful of UK records, mostly from East Anglia. I found about ten in a group of small Scots pine trees only a few miles from here. Scymnus nigrinus is very small and is black and so is not an easy subject to photograph. I used a small floating frame in a technique which holds the ladybird between two very thin plastic films without harming it, described in a new book Micro ladybirds of Britain and Ireland by Maria Justamond and David W.Williams. This has the advantage of allowing a good view of the underside as in many of the micro ladybirds the underneath features help with identification. I found the most difficult thing was avoiding reflections from the flash on the plastic and dealing with the very shallow depth of field when looking from the top. Here is how I got on.
So, not too bad considering the ladybird is only about 2mm long and the photos are taken through a plastic film. This is the habitat.
Other micro ladybirds I have seen before are Rhyzobius forestieri, also Australian and also from Mum's garden,