This month we are looking at things that tell us what animals and birds have been in the meadow, even if they are not actually in sight while we are walking around. This is done with a bit of detective work, by studying the tracks and signs which they leave behind them. These can be roughly divided into four categories, holes and shelters, feeding signs, footprints and animal droppings. This page shows just a few of the ones we have found so far.

Holes and Shelters

Fox Earths or Rabbit Burrows

Around the edges of the meadow hedgerows there are a number of holes, some large and deep, some smaller. These are found mainly in the lower end of the meadow, away from any frequent human disturbance.

The larger holes are likely to be fox earths, while the smaller ones could be rabbit burrows.

Small Mammal Tunnel

Among the longer grass and other plants in the copses you can also see little tunnels and runs made by smaller mammals such as field voles. These runs are found in what is known as a litter layer, which occurs when grass and other vegetation that has died down after the summer is left lying and not removed. The following year’s shoots will grow up through this layer and the old dead layer becomes a home for the small mammals, with a complex of tunnels leading to their nests, latrines and food stores. The small mammals live inside these tunnels, out of sight of predators, and the holes show where they come in and out to feed.

Vole Box Nest

If you walk around the meadow you will see some boxes placed alongside the paths, with lids that can be raised. These have been put there to provide shelter for small mammals such as voles and are occupied mostly during the winter when the weather is cold. Inside almost every box you will find a nest made of dried grass, with a hole in the top where the animal goes in and out.

Molehill

The underground holes and tunnels made by moles cannot be seen, but we know that they have been there by the piles of earth they push up when they come to the surface. This pile appeared in one of the copses, Patrick’s Wood and looks like a molehill, though it was the only one to be seen there.

Feeding Signs

Vole Box Food Remains	Wood Mouse Hole	Bird Holes

There are several different ways in which we can recognise signs of feeding, and in some cases we can identify the specific animal or bird. Some of the more obvious signs are left by small mammals eating hazelnuts, because they chew the nut shells in different ways. The Wood Mouse leaves neat parallel grooves inside the hole chewed in the nut, with scratched tooth marks around the outer edge of the area and on the surface of the nut. The Bank Vole leaves neat grooves, but no scratched tooth marks. Birds and Squirrels usually just peck into or crack open the nuts, leaving jagged, uneven edges.

Food Hoard	Plenty of choice

Under the shrubs in the left hand hedgerow we found a colourful hoard of food remains, including hazelnuts, rose hips and guelder rose berries. These were mainly clustered around a small hole, probably that of a rat. Among the food items were several nuts with various patterns of chew marks and breaks, showing that a number of different animals and birds were taking advantage of the spread that had been provided.

Kestrel Pellet	Buzzard Pellet

The pellets found in the meadow show us where birds of prey have feasted on small mammals and other inhabitants of the area. Pellets vary a lot in size and appearance and it is often possible to identify the bird from which they have come. Kestrel pellets are quite small, around 20-40mm long, and can be confused with little owl pellets, but kestrel pellets are quite pale when dry and have a felty surface, while little owl pellets are darker and often contain a large number of insect remains, such as beetle wing cases. Buzzard pellets are large and contain a large number of small animal bones.

Feather Remains	Fur Remains

There is also evidence of birds and animals that have been eaten when we find piles of feathers, possibly from a meal made by a sparrowhawk, or scraps of fur, maybe from a rabbit that has fallen prey to a fox.

Raided Marble Gall

Birds will find their food in all sorts of places – here we see a marble gall on an oak tree in one of the copses, which has been pecked by a bird to reach the growing gall wasp grub inside it. Woodpeckers are known to do this to galls and we often see and hear green woodpeckers in the meadow.

Footprints

Animal and bird tracks and footprints are more easily seen when the ground is muddy after wet weather and you need to get down and look closely to spot these identifying signs. It is not always easy to tell exactly what has left the prints, as many look rather similar, but some are almost unmistakeable, especially if you already have a reasonable idea of some of the regular visitors.

Heron Print

In a puddle towards the bottom of the meadow we found a number of clear footprints which were almost certainly left by a heron. These are large and slightly asymmetrical, not easily confused with any other bird known to regularly visit Reg’s Meadow.

Pheasant or Partridge Prints

At the top of the meadow near the hides, on the track leading out to the adjacent field, were a lot of prints which are similar in some ways to the heron tracks, but quite a lot smaller. Many different bird prints look very similar and in order to identify them you need to take measurements and look at each individual feature of the print. We are still working on improving our tracking skills, but our best guess for these would be either pheasant or partridge, both of which regularly visit the meadow.

Deer Slots

On the same bit of track were some footprints which were much more easily identifiable. These are deer slots, made by the roe deer which come into the meadow. Deer have cloven hooves and these make deep imprints in muddy ground as they walk or run. The second photograph shows another set of deer slots which was found towards the bottom of the meadow.

Scratch Prints

Some animals leave tracks which just look like scratches, easily visible in sandy or dry soil. The tracks shown here were very small, and may have been left by something like a rat, but again this is only a guess.

Droppings

Rabbit Droppings	Roe Deer Droppings

Many different creatures leave droppings in Reg’s Meadow and some of these are easy to identify. There is one animal whose droppings most people can probably recognise – the rabbit. These are small, almost spherical and a greyish brown colour, getting lighter as they dry. They are found almost everywhere and are very familiar, but they could be confused with the similar-sized droppings of roe deer. These are a slightly different shape, a little more oval and pointed at one end. They are a shiny black colour when fresh – those shown here were found at the edge of the mound, near the seating area, showing that the deer have also been visiting that area.

We will cover more tracks and signs in a later page as we find them – but now we move on from things that weren’t there to something that was …

For the first time I was able to find and catch on camera something that was actually inside one of the vole boxes, but this is not a vole. It is a shrew and from the size of the animal it is probably a Common Shrew, the second most common British mammal. It is also known as the European Shrew or the Eurasian Shrew.

The Common Shrew is a tiny, ferocious predator, around 5-8cm long, with a long, pointed, flexible snout, small round ears and a tail 5-6cm long. The fur on its back is dark brown in adults and that on its belly more greyish, with a lighter brown between the two areas. It is found across Britain, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, in woods, scrub, hedges and grassland, especially where there is good vegetation cover. Shrews hunt for food, using their snouts, and mainly feeding on insects, slugs, spiders and worms. They have a high metabolic rate, so they need to feed every few hours and have to eat a large proportion of their body weight each day to survive. They sleep for very short periods, hunting day and night in active bursts. Their eyesight is poor but they have an excellent sense of both smell and hearing. They are too small to hold the fat reserves needed for hibernation, so they remain awake throughout the winter.

Many things eat shrews, including owls, foxes, stoats and weasels, but cats, which often catch and kill them, apparently rarely eat them, as they have a very unpleasant taste. Shrew remains are often found in owl pellets and their skeletal jaw remains can be identified by their red-tipped teeth.

They are solitary animals except when breeding and are very aggressive to other members of the same species, often fighting with any other shrew venturing into their territory. Their lifespan is between one and two years.

In English folklore shrews had a bad reputation. The name has been used for many centuries to describe a bad-tempered or sharp-tongued person and their bite was believed to be poisonous to domestic animals. If a shrew crawled over an animal or human it was thought to bring pain and swellings. These could only be cured by boring a hole in an ash tree or making a split in a branch and imprisoning a live shrew inside.

Nowadays the shrew is protected under the Wildlife & Countryside Act of 1981 and it is an offence to kill one without a license.