Wednesday 13 January 2021

Headtorch searching again.


Winter Moth, there were five on trees around the garden.

Limacus maculatus, two of these and some tiny juveniles on trees.

Zygiella x-notata around the windows.

And a Wood Mouse in one of the garage snap traps. We have a bit of a rodent issue at the moment. The new camera trap is out rat hunting tonight.

Wood Mouse, unfortunately (in some ways) RIP.

3 comments:

Gibster said...

Wood Mice. What can you say - lovely to watch as they bound around being all energetic and stuff, amusing and fun things. Except when they're in your walls and ceiling spaces, wearing hob-nailed boots and throwing parties at 3am. There are lots of traps here too, and I do feel bad for setting them. But there has to be some sort of a predator/prey equilibrium and there really aren't enough owls and weasels here to keep up with them.

martinf said...

I get lots of mice in the house at this time of year but the standard ones not Wood ones. They get trapped and put in the freezer. Great for attracting beetles come spring!!

Alastair said...

The freezer (which is quite small) contains a couple of Orkney Voles and a Pygmy Shrew for a mammal enthusiast south. I don't think I'd get away with stuffing it with mice too! Louise is not especially happy about me commandeering the upper, fridge part of it, for a lot of insect specimens. We had a mouse, species undetermined, we are one of the few places in the county to have House Mouse as well, chew through one of our plastic water pipes in a wall last winter. It took a while to figure out that it wasn't the weather coming in, suspicions raised when on a dry day water was flowing out of the house into the garden. Expensive. Younger daughter has complained about the parties of late and there seemed to be something going on around our veggy waste recycling, I'll post a video from the (new) camera trap later, you'll observe I've resorted, temporarily to more serious control methods for that issue.