And so Monday morning dawns – the first night that our traps have been catching any visitors. We gather at 0630, a little blurry eyed and slightly feeling the cold, to see who had been tempted in by the snacks & warm bed. Huma, our project leader, was full of energy & enthusiasm – impressive given that she’d got up practically in the middle of the night to drive in from Hertfordshire. How does she do it?
The first step was to bring everything we needed to a central point. This was rather a lot – bags to carry traps in, hay & food to replenish traps, rulers & scales to measure and weigh, nail scissors to clip fur (for identification purposes), rubbish bags for the used bedding. Then we visited all the traps, locking open all those that hadn’t been sprung (to ensure that no animals were trapped after this time) and collecting up all those that had been sprung – 22 of the 32. For each animal captured, we had to identify gender, clip a section of fur to identify it uniquely if trapped a second time, measure it from nose to tail and the length of its hind foot and weigh it, before returning it to the area where it had been trapped – all as quickly & quietly as possible to avoid stressing the animal. This isn’t straightforward when all it wants to do is escape!
To finish, we put more hay & food in all the traps and put them back, to see who else visits them (or if we get repeat visits). We’ll check this evening, when we’re not likely to have too many, as small mammals are more active at night. But you never know!
Two of the traps turned out to be empty, which meant we had 20 – animals, all wood mice, 13 females and 7 males. It was fantastic to get so many (and they are quite cute) but a vole or a shrew would have been even better. But fingers crossed – who knows what we’ll see over the next 4 days?
Thanks to Ian Alexander for the photos – you can read his take on events on his blog Obsessed by Nature.