It is just over a year since I first obtained trail camera videos of a polecat. This is one of our most elusive mammals and is slowly recovering from near extinction. It is shy and mostly active at night but also inquisitive, so an ideal target for a trail camera.
Like last year, these recordings were made in Allendale in west Northumberland. This time I am indebted to David Stewart and Fiona Gough for permission to site the cameras on their land. Polecats prefer lowland countryside with a good supply of rabbits so Allendale suits them well.
A polecat is curious enough and small enough to enter the camera box so I set one up. The recordings were made for 11 nights and like last year a polecat was in on the first night to have look around. It returned on the second and fourth nights but then lost interest, probably realising that there wasn't going to be anything to eat. In the video the polecat seemed to pause on its way out and I am pretty sure it would have been leaving a scent mark in the pipe. That's presumably why nothing else showed up for a week and even then there were only two brief sightings of a field vole.
Another camera was set in a field shelter. I used a Camtraptions trail camera because of its white light for video but it has a number of technical drawbacks and the pictures were not high quality with a "noisy" image. However, a polecat was a very regular visitor, probably because there were also lots of recordings of rabbits.
I also set a camera on a bank at the edge of a muck heap which looked as though it had several rabbit holes. The polecat initially seemed to be scent-marking but then it caught sight of the camera. It seemed to be very aware of and intrigued by the camera and several times stood up to have a better look - a behaviour I haven't seen before but which is shared by other mustelids.
Polecats were almost extinct in England by the end of the 19th century, mainly because of persecution by gamekeepers. There was a small residual population in central Wales and in recent decades the population in central and southern parts of England has been recovering. Recovery has been slower in the North but polecats are found in Cumbria and in western parts of Northumberland and County Durham. I found it difficult to get an accurate picture of distribution but for what it is worth this is the map from iRecord. It is odd that they don't seem to want to go north of Hadrian's Wall although there are some in north east Scotland.
Here's a similar map from the Vincent Wildlife Trust which predates the 2024-2025 National Polecat Survey, results of which are due to be published this autumn.
The cameras are still in place so I hope I'll have more images to share soon.
