The Owl in t'Ole, the Vole's 'Oles and a Coypu's rear end....

We've been having a lot of Tawny Owl [Strix aluco] Chouette hulotte activity over the past few weeks...
regular trilling sessions in the hangar...
and male and female calling from by the river...
and the male doing "territorial tours" at intervals throughout the night....
so we put the new wide-angle "piege photographique" out by the owl box.
We decided to get a wide-angle as  a second one...
as the narrow angle of the first gave too many triggered videos with nowt in them!!

This is a real stake-out!

Initially, we recorded nothing... the camera was too far from the box!!

Now in a much better position....

Once I had repositioned the apparatus...
ie: banged the wooden stake in the ground in a different position...
not difficult given how boggy the ground is at the moment...
then mounted the camera on top...all highly complex!
Result!!

And this is the view from the camera

The hole has changed its appearance...

Did you knock?

Hey, you...robot...

...did YOU knock!?

She...because of the size...
we'd noticed last year that she seemed to have difficulty getting through the hole...
designed for a MUCH sleeker species... a Barn Owl...
she was being mobbed by a lot of small passerines....
and, fortunately for us, she was up an hour or two earlier than normal!!

VIDEOs:
The first shows intense activity by the mobbing crowd....
the second shows the Owl reacting to the mobbing.

So, on the Faune Touraine site...
Pauline has been able to record evidence of nesting....
for the second year on the trot!!
We just need to record the male arriving with food...
and it would be nice to record the young this year...
another reason for the wide-angle version!
Dad looked very confused last year when he turned up...
with a nice vole... and there was no one at home!!

Meanwhile the first camera trap has also been busy...
about three weeks back we saw watervole activity...
Southern Watervoles [Arvicola sapidus] Campagnol aquatique....
two individuals jumping into the river...
again, I put the camera in the wrong position...
expecting riverbank activity, I placed it on the longère side of the millstream...
result...
a lot of nada!!

Then, just over seven days ago, I took a different route back from the owl box...
mainly to check on signs of deer activity...
and, drawing level with the sighting of the voles, I saw this at the side of the path...

This is a view down on top of a Water Vole runway

The run continues along the bottom here...
and the three dark areas above, are where it has sat and fed.

A well trodden vole width path, leading from the old ford, comes up to this feeding area.
So....

Yes... it is active this close to the house

This is the camera on tripod....
I have extended the column, because the pictures below....
taken at half the height....
aren't showing the vole clearly enough.

The camera was quickly repositioned...
and on Leap Day we got results... both night and day!!
First we got a night shot....

Just triggered the camera...

And then some daytime feeding.... watervoles are active day and night...

The vole is at the left....
this will help you spot it in the video below.

Then, yesterday, we had a very good daytime sighting...
a vole came bobbing along in the coffee "au lait" floodwater...
and swung into the bank opposite the lounge windows.
Cue frantic dash for camera and repositioning...
out it came and continued downstream...
click... click... click...
it went under the bridge....
I played "Pooh" voles and ran to the front door...
click... click... click...
and it swung into the bank again...
and vanished into the undergrowth.
Got a good few pix...
check...

Oh! OH!
No....OH NO!!
Aarrrgh!

I am using the camera on manual at the moment...
it was set for bright sunlight...
I was taking pix of the Siskins a few days back...
when we had some sun!
All the shots were black.... my fault entirely....
should have taken a test exposure...
just before the little blighter re-appeared...
and taken note of what the camera was trying to tell me!
It has happened before...
it WILL happen again... of that I am certain!
As will the opposite... the all white shots!!

But, where that little vole swung into the bank and vanished....
was right where the well used path to the feeding area begins...
it may well have taken a selfie?!
We won't know until I've checked the camera....
and I am only checking every few days to avoid too much disturbance.
In the meantime... the coypu exited left!

This is a Coypu kit... so much larger than a Muskrat or a Watervole.

Posted by Tim
for....

Osprey eats Raptor...

Looking out of the bedroom window this morning I spotted the Buzzard [Buteo buteo] Buse variable I call "Osprey" busily eating something near to the field seed feeder...

Busy feeding... the white line is feathers!

I went into the guest room to try and get a picture that wasn't through the willow...

But these were the best I could get [at 800ASA in the poor light]... here it is pulling hard at some flesh.

First thoughts were that it had got a pheasant...
but we could see all ten of the Dopey Dorises...
had it taken the Jeremy?

Seven of Ten... the Dopey Dorises under the feeder...

I thought not... the trail of plucked feathers were too white... and then I saw the Jeremy in the field the other side of the Aigronne, parleying with some crows.
were there eleven females around then?

These two shots show why I call it Osprey ...

...the position of the white on the breast and head, front and, here, back... coupled with the colour of the wings...
make it look very much like an Osprey [Pandion haliaetus] Balbuzard pêcheur when it is upright on a post...
 especially by the étang!!

I wasn't going to investigate quite at that moment.... the rain was drifting in sheets across the meadow, in the strong winds!
The buzzard wasn't at all worried by a little rain... it just kept on feeding.
It was there for around an hour... eating all the time.
It then stood there... open beak and hanging wings... panting... trying to cool off...
[all birds do this after a very large meal... their metabolism is such that they heat up very rapidly after a good feast]
... before flying up into a carefully "fallen" tree...
where it rested a while before flying off.


When there was a break in the rain, I put my boots on and went to inspect the kill...

As you can see from the last of the above pictures, it was no pheasant...
not with feet like that!

It was a Barn Owl [Tyto alba] Effraie des clochers... possibly the one that was using our "donkey shed" this summer... who knows?
There was certainly nothing that could be described as identifiable remains of that one...
it was quite a dark morph... but you'd need more than was left here to see that...
the buzzard had eaten all but a few feathers, the pelvis and the feet!

It had also left the next pellet / stomach contents...

I found this when I moved some feathers... so I'm pretty sure that it doesn't belong to the Buzzard.

...that will give me a clue as to what the owl was finding...
not much probably, there are beetle wing cases in the pellet...
the whole valley is thoroughly water-logged...
it's no place for voles!!

There has been standing water since Christmas in all the grazing meadows...
the places that the owl is most likely to hunt...
and in the ploughed [and in some cases, planted] fields that are also in the flood plain...
there are vast open areas on "the tops"...
but even there, you can see the standing water!

This is a hard time for the night raptors that have a major diet of voles...
it is probably bad for the Little Owl [Athena noctua] Chêveche d'Athéna that lives up by Bezuard...
there will be few insects available...
it will be having a "diet of wurms".

If as I suspect, there has been a crash in the vole population....
it is the top predators, in this case raptors, that suffer first.

Our cat has only managed a couple of voles since Christmas...
and just before the last snow, the local Kestrel took a bird as prey off our front door.
So their pickings are meagre...
Baron has his tinned food and the Kestrel has switched to birds.
You should see them scatter when it is about... normally they ignore it!

The Barn Owls are unlikely to try that...

The Tawny Owl [Strix aluco] Chouette hulotte is probably OK up there in the woods...
there will be field mice around...
and possibly Bank Voles...
and probably an "invasion" of water displaced refugees...
so it is sitting pretty!

The Barn Owl can probably hunt on the fringes of the woods...
but it would not be instinctive...
so it is most probable that the poor Barn Owl here was either an older bird...
or one of this years young [the dried feathers will give me some idea]...
but, either way it would be starving and may have succumbed in the last snowfall.

The Buzzard is a well known scavenger and saw its chance of a good meal in hard times.

We can feed the small passerines, and some of the more adaptable insectivores...
the Robin was using the fat balls last year in the freeze...
but there is no way of feeding the raptors...
other than making sure there is a supply of passerines for those that will take them.

So, sad though it is, we will probably see fewer Barn Owls around next year...
they start breeding early in the year and, unless vole numbers increase rapidly...
they won't be able to feed two or three owlets...
so it will take a few years for a good population to build.

Apologies if you found this upsetting... believe me, I did when I discovered that it was a Barn Owl... 

but that's life... and our valley will find more Barn Owls coming by! In fact I have a very large nest box to put up... a Barn Owl box... it will be going in the trees by the Aigronne.

On a lighter note the "smell chequer" didn't recognise passerines... 
it wanted me to put pessaries!

There's something under my piles! Don't ask....

I was shifting some of my piles...
of grass....
the other day when I came across some amazing lines in the exposed grass and moss.

This is one of my piles with the nearest part removed...
you can just make out the dark shadow of two runs in the foreground.

Which once all the grass is removed reveals a network...

... and this is a closer view of the network in the foreground...

...and, by the blade of grass in the middle of the previous picture was the entrance to the underground world.

These are the runways of voles [campagnols] who seem to occupy around 90% of our land. They have taken advantage of where I raked the grass into rows ready for collection, to move under cover between areas of forage.
They have also eaten undercover... there are places where they've made cosy, moss-lined nests.

This is a "day bed"... a place where the vole can lay up and eat fresh gatherings whilst under cover.

Another indicator that tells me these are voles, are the latrines. Mice eat and 'go' on the run, as it were! Voles are tidier.

A latrine.... The bright green droppings are the freshest.

Which particular vole, I cannot be certain.... but both Short-tailed Field Vole [Microtus agrestis] Campagnol agreste and Bank Vole [Clethryonomus glareoulus] Campagnol roussâtre are present in this particular area... as is the "Mining Vole" Common Pine Vole [Microtus subterraneus] Campagnol souterrain. Unfortunately our best collector of evidence always starts at the head end!!

I also found this wonderful nest when I was cutting back bramble on the fence line between us and our neighbours.

It is the nest of a Harvest Mouse [Micromys minutus] Rat des moissons.

• It is a loose woven ball of grass.
• There are no signs of an exit/entrance hole. 
• It is also exceptionally clean.

These are all indicators to me of what it was...
Its position, quite high up in the brambles, isn't really an indicator as this would have been a very good site for many birds.
No hole? Yes, no hole. The harvest mouse pushes its way in and out, the hole closing behind it. This leaves the young in a secure, invisible package.

All animals leave signs of where they've been, but they are not always so clear as these. Amelia on A French Garden blogged about damage to hazelnuts... voles again probably... or possibly dormice.
Click on the last photo of hers to enlarge it... you will see a small hole in the nearest... just behind that beautifully shaped opening. This seems to indicate that the initial thief was probably a woodpecker or a jay [see the pictures below] and the nut was left in the crook of the branch and then eaten by a rodent. The more I look at this picture, the more "dormouse" shouts at me... the nibbling just looks too 'polished' for a vole! [The French Garden site opens into a new tab or window... you will be able to compare the picture with those below by clicking between the two.]

Most of the hazelnuts below have been damaged by a woodpecker or Jay, some have had further "rodent" enlargement.

From top...
1] Probable Jay or Woodpecker
2] Again bird damage... Jay? But with a bit of nibbling.
3] Rodent... very untidy... Rat or Squirrel
4] Rodent... neater... probably Field Mouse [voles are even tidier!]

Squirrels split nuts from the top... they also chew all round a pine/spruce cone... as opposed to nibbling... and leave it very untidy. But splits in the scales like these...

You can see clearly where the sharp tip of the upper mandible has pierced the scale.

... are the work of a crossbill. The photo above is from this post about crossbills.

Winter tracks and signs are often easier to spot... we wrote about some here.

Back on track....s

Snow on the ground can tell you a lot about what's going on.... provided you can follow the tracks.

We've recently blogged about the hare that came past.... but there were more traces of animal and bird activity to tell us who was around.

Vole tracks under the snow....

The first was some strange lines in the snow near the lime tree.... the crust of the snow had been pushed up and cracked. These were caused by a rodent seeking food under the snow... most probably a vole. There were other tracks on the surface there... definately caused by a field mouse out on the hunt for food.
How do we know the difference? Well, voles tend to create runs in the long grass and thick vegetation... mice tend to keep to the clearer spaces.... so our thoughts are directed by their behaviour. Why were we certain about the mouse... splayed back feet prints and a drag line from the tail.

...Mice above [it hops more than walks].

We could see the tracks of the moorhens, forced to plod from the bief to the feeder out in the field, the slight strip of webbing each side of the toes giving a distinct chubbiness to the print. The pheasants, also around the feeder, had their own pattern... a sharper, slimmer toe line with a longer rear toe... and a drag mark from the tail. Also... they tend to hurry, not plod, so the print has rough edges with traces of snow spread over the undisturbed crust.

A fox trotting... paw marks inline.

We had a fox that came into the bottom corner of the verger, did a short circuit toward the bief and returned almost the same route and over the fence... those tracks were totally different from the coypu [ragondin] tram lines where they had journeyed in convoy from the bief to the fence line... where longer grass had left pockets of vegetation exposed.

The coypu rocks along as it walks...

... here though you can see the lines caused by two tails...
a pair of youngsters went along here [the other tracks are hare].

But perhaps the most vivid was the little vole hole in the snow with a trail of footprints leading from it....

The vole hole is at the top... just beside a line of pheasant tracks.
You can see that these tracks are very different from those left by a field mouse.

You can see the hole here at the right... 
you can also see the toes in the pheasant track.

We followed and found why they hadn't returned... it had become supper for an owl.

The final moments...
the vole track is coming in at the top...
the owl struck from the  bottom right...
the pit is where the feet grabbed the vole...
the wings pushed into the snow as it lifted off to the top left...
and there is a slight disturbance of the snow beyond the wing prints...
probably caused by by the vole's body bumping on the crust.

Like we said... you can learn a lot about who is around and what they are doing.

Vole trouble

Our city-dwelling tom cat, Baron aka Bagger, has discovered in himself the capacity to catch mice. Catch, you understand. Very gently, he brings back all items to the front door. And if the door is open, he brings them inside and places them on the floor for us and his sister to admire. As of yesterday afternoon, a fully alive vole is somewhere lurking under the furniture, or in the firewood stack, or maybe someone may discover him when they put on a shoe. Bagger's sister RonRon is a student of wildlife, and watches the vole's progress with great interest, but so far has made no attempt to catch one herself. She prefers to find a warm spot and curl up "asleep" (waiting for the main chance).

We could have at least six species of vole in our environment. Bagger has already brought us a specimen of the Campagnol Souterrain microtus subterraneus. We know this as the Mining Vole because of its little tunnels everywhere, a few inches below the ground and in the floor of the barn before we concreted it. It is more properly known as the Common Pine Vole. How dull. Who thinks of these names?

The little chap running around our living room looked bigger than the Mining Vole and is possibly a Common Vole [Campagnol des Champs] Microtus arvalis or Short-tailed Field Vole [Campagnol Agreste] Microtus agrestis – if and when we catch him, we’ll have him in a dentists chair and look at his teeth! We have two live traps down [a Longworth small mammal trap, baited with “Snacky Cracky” – a sugar-and-nut confection from Lidl that has proved irresistible to small rodents in the past] and a commercial "multi-capture" trap. A couple of years ago, a band of brothers took it in turns to venture into our kitchen – a series of wood mice, all male, went straight for the trap and the Snacky Cracky. Unfortunately before we put the trap down, mouse number one spent some time in the kitchen, sampling this and that. An intellectual mouse, he nibbled the spine of the dictionary. Thirsting for refreshment as well as knowledge, he chewed the foil capsule on a bottle of Cremant de Loire!

Tim encountered a Bank Vole [Campagnol Roussâtre] Clethronomys glareolus out in the meadow. We saw a Water Vole in the millstream but whether it was the Northern Campagnol Terrestre Arvicole terrestris or the Southern Campagnol Amphibe Arvicole sapidus species, goodness knows. Once upon a time, they were both Arvicola amphibius. The lumpers and splitters have been at it again!