Tag: Animal Tracking Tunnel

Even by boosting the contrast, I can’t really pick out any definite tracks at the entrance to my animal tracking tunnel, which has now been sitting amongst the long grass by the hedge at the end of the garden for two days. The damp paper along the edges might have been nibbled by slugs.

As I moved in to take a close-up photograph, a vole ran out from the tunnel. It happened so quickly that I wondered if it really had been in there or whether it had been hidden in the grass at my feet but when I slid out the bait tray I could see that half the sunflower hearts had disappeared.

One of the sunflower hearts had been nibbled at one end to expose the seed inside.

In the milk bottle top that serves as a bowl for the bait something has been nibbling away at what I think might be fragments of peanuts in the peanut butter. Traces of slime suggest that slugs or snails have been visiting the tunnel.

I’ve topped up the bait with sunflower hearts, so my tracking tunnel has now become a vole feeding station.

It’s the final week of the University of York’s free online Future Learn course The Biology of Bugs, Brains and Beasts and for our ‘Beasts’ practical work, we’re using a homemade tracking to tunnel to discover – if it works – whether we’ve got rodents or hedgehogs in our back garden.

I’ve slotted two cut-down 4-pint plastic milk bottles to make the tunnel. Our long-handled stapler came in useful here.

I then covered the tunnel in black sugar paper because small mammals prefer darker places to forage. Black plastic would have been more weatherproof, but I had the sugar paper to hand.

Finally, using one of the milk bottle tops which I’d saved, I baited the tunnel with organic peanut butter and a few sunflower hearts from the bird feeder. That should be more than enough to tempt any passing rodent.

The sponge is soaked in green food dye and hopefully, in the morning, I’ll see a few small footprints on the paper. I’ve left it in the quietest part of the garden at the back of my little meadow area, in the long grass near the hedge. A small hole amongst the grasses at the far end of the tunnel might well be a vole hole.

Links

How to make a tracking tunnel, backyard conservation with Ana.

The Future Learn Biology of Bugs, Brains and Beasts course run by the biosciences department of the University of York