It has been a quiet start to the year for my camera box. The camera has been in place all the time since last March with a peak in weasel activity late last summer. There was only one brief visit from a male weasel in January this year, one even briefer visit from a female weasel in February and a glimpse of a male stoat that turned round in the entrance in March. Here they all are in the video - don't blink. And although the images are blurred, notice the size difference between a male and a female weasel.
A recent paper by Croose et al looked at how well the Mostela (a professional camera box similar to mine) performed in detection of weasels and stoats compared to an external trail camera. It found that weasels readily entered the box and were detected by both techniques. Stoats were rare and never went inside, which tallies with my experience here.
Non target species have been plenty. I posted videos of pygmy shrew, common shrew and water shrew in January. The camera has also seen field vole, wood mouse, American grey squirrel, robin, wren and great tit. Here is the pygmy shrew - the pipe inner diameter is about 48mm so you can see how tiny the shrew is.
The presence of voles is encouraging as they are the main prey for weasels but the voles only appear in the box at night and the weasels are strictly diurnal.
Weasel territories are about 1-10 hectares for females and 2-25 hectares for males, while stoats' territories are typically larger, varying from 2-124 hectares for females and 8-256 hectares for males. That means my patch is as little as 2-5% of a weasel territory and even less for a stoat so it is no surprise that they aren't seen here very often. I hope when the meadow grows up in the next few weeks the voles may move back in and attract more weasels. We'll see.
