Mucking about with mammals

The other weekend I was fortunate enough to spend a very enjoyable morning with a group of mature students, teaching them how to find and identify mammals in the field. Much of the skill required to find and identify mammals actually centres on being able to locate and recognise mammal droppings and footprints – rather than the mammals themselves. This is because many of our mammals are elusive, avoiding contact with humans, and so are encountered only relatively infrequently. The signs they leave behind, however, can be found more readily and provide an ideal mechanism for establishing that a particular mammal has used the area. The students were all taking part in an evening course being run by the University of East Anglia. Each student was keen to develop his or her skills and to broaden their knowledge of our mammal fauna. Here, in Norfolk, we do fairly well for mammals and with a bit of effort you can encounter most of our terrestrial species – from the Chinese water deer that frequent the broads, through to the brown hares that do so well on our open arable farms.

When looking for signs of mammals you often spend a lot of your time bending over, crouching down or crawling about on your hands and knees. The grounds of Bayfield Hall, where Natural Surroundings is based, were our study area and, with the River Glaven flowing through the valley, we were soon able to find evidence of a range of mammals. Under the hazels were many of last years’ nuts, split open by squirrels. Adult grey squirrels split the nuts cleanly in two, but younger, inexperienced, individuals often make a bit of a mess and the opened shell is jagged and haphazard. Wood mice and bank voles, also partial to hazel nuts, open a smaller rounded hole in the shell, each with its own identifiable pattern of tooth marks.

Down by the river, on the areas of soft mud that we had smoothed over the previous evening, were the tracks of pheasants, brown rats and, in one spot, a passing stoat. These provided us with an opportunity to take casts of the tracks by using plaster of paris, something that I had not done since I was a child. This kind of hands-on detective work is great fun and it was clear that the students had enjoyed themselves. Of course, it has a more serious side as well, in that records of mammals (or evidence that they have used an area) have real conservation value. This is another important aspect of the course, teaching the students to collect and submit their records to the county biological records centre so they may be used more widely.