I joined the Vole Patrol last week. “What’s the Vole Patrol?”, I hear you ask (I have very good hearing). It’s a research project set up by the London Wildlife Trust (with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund) on 9 sites in west London. One of these is Gunnersbury Triangle, the London Wildlife Trust reserve on Bollo Lane in Chiswick.
Surprisingly little is known about small mammals in London – how many there are, where they live. This project aims to fill this gap, using a variety of methods. We hope to learn a lot more about London’s small mammals including wood mice (shown in feature photo), yellow-necked mice, bank voles, water shrews, and Britain’s favourite mammal – the hedgehog. We’re unlikely to find dormice or water voles at Gunnersbury Triangle – but you never know!
Last Thursday, we Vole Patrol project volunteers had a day’s training at the Gunnersbury Triangle reserve, including a presentation by project leader Huma Pearce and an afternoon setting up nest tubes, footprint tunnels and shrew tubes.
The footprint tunnels contain food, paint and paper and are designed to test the artistic talents of small mammals. Well, sort of. The animal enters the tube, treads in the paint, eats the food, then exits leaving painty footprints on the paper. That way we can tell which species are eating our food.
We left them in place for 5 days, checking them daily, and leaving clean paper & more food. Here are some sample pictures:
We’re looking forward to meeting up with Huma again to find out who’s been visiting. We’re now planning to move them to a new site, which could be a nearby garden, an allotment site or a school playing fields (or garden area).
If you’d like to host a footprint tunnel or find out more about the project, please contact me on editor@growchiswick.org.
All photos (except wood mouse) by Ian Alexander