Recording local wildlife

 

I came across an event run by Greater Manchester Record Centre called small mammal trapping and thought it would be interesting for us all to see what was going on so I duly booked us a place this last weekend. We went along Friday evening to meet up with the Salford Rangers, Stephen who is employed by the Greater Manchester record Centre and Tony who brought the traps from Liverpool museum. We met at the Garden Needs plant centre and headed into Kersal Dale where Tony explained about the 3 different kinds of traps he had brought.

 

He had 39 traps which we filled with straw for bedding and some food - cat food and seeds - before placing in various places around the area. The idea I think was that each traps position was logged with its GPS coordinate, but everyone was a bit excited and went off placing their traps, so the chap with the GPS didn't manage to get round and log them all. This proved to be a problem the following day when we were trying to locate them all again and people couldn't remember where they had put them (and one lady couldn't make it the following day either!)

Kersal Dale was a lovely spot we hadn't visited before. It was predominantly a beech wood but we saw a sweet chestnut which was dropping loads of fruit. We did a little research about them on the Friday evening and went back armed with strong gloves and a thick bag to collect them in.

Saturday dawned and it was an early start for us all to get out of the house! We were last to arrive but got there just in time to see the first mammal that had been caught - a wood mouse.

The boys traps were down by the River Irwell - 2 out of 3 had been tripped but only one had something in - another mouse

 It was difficult to tell when you picked them up if there was an animal in as these mice only weigh up to a max of about 30g.

Mature wood mouse

Young wood mouse

An hour later we had found 37 of the traps and 11 wood mice - male and female had been logged.

More searching for a while with pleasant conversation with like minded people about bird song, kingfisher sightings and fungi foraging and only one more trap found the other being declared lost!

We headed back to the garden centre where Tony gave an interesting presentation on small mammals that may be seen locally - unfortunately we had to leave before it had finished due to a prior commitment, but not before we had made arrangements to borrow some traps from the record centre to see what small mammals are down in our local valley. The boys were really keen to pursue this - Luke has been researching how to make a trap - so shall look forward to the next instalment!