February 2017

Well! Where did January go?

It's been a cold, frosty and foggy time down here in Kent, with the fog rolling off the fields next door early in the morning, being replaced mostly by rain.  The early part of January gave us some snow and kept the birds huddled around the feeding stations, not to mention our two house guests, Mim and Motty, who secured a bed for pretty well most nights.  I suppose it's not surprising seeing as both of them are into their old age and taking any scrap of comfort where they can find it.

Foxes

We have been successful in identifying who's who in the adult fox world.  I won't go into detail but by a bit of detective work on the videos we have now established for sure which one is Jenny and which one is Johnny.  

If you look closely at Johnny's tail you will see that's it's a lot shorter than Jenny's.  Whether he's had some sort of accident or not we're not sure, but it's considerably shorter than Jenny's which has a white tip at the end of it.  Identifying them both and their movements will be easier.

Both are in excellent condition at the moment which serves them well as we're now into breeding season.  We've witnessed lots of barking from Jenny while she has been in the paddock during the day, which is a sign that she's calling for attention from other dog foxes.  Johnny will have to make sure he's in peak condition if other males are around. 

New Arrivals.

The hen house is secured and in place in the field next door.  Pauline, our neighbor has let us use part of her poultry field. As you can see from the picture we've gone to great lengths to secure the house, making sure that nobody can dig underneath the house, or jump on top of it.  We've used welded mesh around the perimeter of the house, as the fox or badger will always dig as close as it can to get in.  We also added an extra run at the end to give the hens more room to move about.

The hens are due to arrive on February 28th when the current ban on poultry movement is lifted, so we're hoping that there are no more outbreaks of Avian flu to push that date back.   The hens are Bovans Neras, a docile breed which lay dark brown eggs.

Hedgehogs.   

We haven't seen any Hedgehogs in the vicinity which is probably due to the Badgers and Foxes being in residence, however, one of our neighbors, Hester, has seen them in her fields and we think there are some hibernating in an old pile of leaves she has near her compost heap.

It's that time of year now when the Hedgehogs might just be waking up to top up their fat reserves, and so we've put a 'footprint trap' near to where they are nesting, in the hope that we can capture them either on camera, or their footprints when they feed.

This is a standard footprint trap for small mammals which we'll be using. It's made out of corrugated plastic, with two sheets of A4 paper at either end, some food in the middle as bait, and some inked masking tape which the animals walk through.  The ink is eco friendly, a mixture of charcoal powder and vegetable oil and will not harm the animals.  We'll be borrowing some of Mim and Motty's chicken flavoured cat food for the bait, as apparently the Hedgehogs are partial to that.

The plan is, the animals will walk through the tunnel, across the inked tape and take the food. Which ever way they leave, we should get some prints. We'll put this down in an appropriate place and leave a camera at one end and see who visits.  Watch this space.

Owls.

Some of you may have seen the video on Facebook of the Tawny Owl near the nest box.  It wasn't a good quality video so I won't load it here, but suffice to say Hooty was in the vicinity of the nest box early one morning this week, and hopefully she's spotted it with a view to using it.  I'll keep the camera on it for a few more weeks.

The Pond.

The pond is now complete with some oxygenating plants, and hessian around the sides to assist anything that falls in unexpectedly, to climb out.  There is also a ramp and a bird bath in the middle.  The roofing tiles to the left allow the frogs and toads to crawl underneath for shelter.  There has been no activity so far around the pond and it's only slightly frozen over once so far.

Badgers.

Bella and her family are still very active and keeping their sett(s) clean and tidy. 

I've done some research on the structure of the Badgers' setts and it could well be that the underground tunnel system is spread over the whole of the paddock which is little under an acre in size.  Here's a picture of the area and who is sleeping where, but for obvious reasons I won't say exactly where it is.

1 and 2 are the Foxes dens, while 3,4 and 5 are the Badgers' setts.  It appears that there is a maze of connecting tunnels between all five entrance sites as we've seen both species using the same entrances at different times. Entrance 1 seems to be the central point.  It doesn't look that 4 and 5 are linked, but there is a link between  1 and 4, and 2 and 3.  It's mainly here at entrances 2 and 3 where the Badgers and Foxes bump into each other.

So far there is no evidence of any squabbling, as it seems to be the badgers who are getting their own way especially when it comes to housing. There are probably enough resources to go round for both sets of families, but spring should be interesting if we see more cubs arriving.

More later with hopefully an update on the Hedgehogs......