Drowned rats...

As you can see from this photo, two days of rain has culminated in a huge amount of water-logging of the Cook's Lake research area...necessitating a great deal of wading to reach our mammal trapping site this morning! That said, at least the rain had stopped...and no, we didn't end up drowning any rodents thankfully - no, unfortunately the whole team were drowned rats at the end of Wednesday!!

As the weather cleared today, we checked our Cook's Lake traps for the last time. Sadly because of the rain, we haven't been successful in trapping any rodents in the meadows, but had a little more success in the forested area. Our contribution to Chris and Christina's long term monitoring of the Cook's Lake area yielded the following distribution and abundance results:

Red-Backed Voles per ha = 6.7
Chipmunks = 1 caught
No mice/no meadow voles or shrews caught

Numbers were lower than the scientists would have expected, but the heavy rains will definitely have skewed results.

The second picture shows me preparing a Longworth trap - to do this correctly, the two sections of the trap should be separated, fresh, dry hay/grass inserted into the main body of the trap until it's at least half full and in order that the rodents are comfortable and warm during their stay; and a small palm-full of bird/mouse-feed put inside. The tunnel should then be attached at a slight angle (creating a 'banana shape') and the trap set carefully (back end higher up), located in an area where one might expect rodents to be lurking - i.e. near obvious mice-holes, feeding areas at the foot of trees, or alongside logs or objects rodents would run along to take cover. There is no point in setting traps in the open as rodents rarely take the risk of running in open ground...