At the beginning of 30 Days Wild I took up the Oxfordshire Mammal Group challenge of spotting 30 different mammals in 30 Days, then recording them through their website
I realised right from the start that it would probably be impossible but I thought I would try.
The first few were easy, mammals I come across every day on my local patch. Rabbits, Roe deer, Muntjac deer, Hares and Badgers
Roe deer
Muntjac deer
hares in tractor lines
A few were more difficult, they were the mammals that I knew were on my patch but I only come across now and then, such as Fallow deer, the grey squirrel that sometimes visits my garden and a fox.
Grey squirrel in my garden
Fallow deer
The ones that I least expected was the stoat and the weasel. I very occasionally see them quickly disappearing in to the grass verge, but on the 1st June I saw this weasel carrying a small rodent.
Weasel with a small rodent
A couple of days later when I was looking for the weasel again, I spotted a stoat carrying a baby rabbit in its mouth, at the time I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo, but this is a photo from the end of May when I saw a stoat running down the track.
We have a wood mouse that lives in our bug hotel, a mole under our lawn and the trail camera often picks up rats around the wood.
One day when we were badger watching a rat popped out of a badger hole and ran over my mum’s foot. She is not scared of rats, but it made her jump. She screamed loudly and all the badgers panicked and ran back down their holes.
wood mouse
The most exciting mammal, was the hedgehog. I had never seen a live wild hedgehog before. I had put the trail cam in the garden hoping to get some wood mice or the fox that sometimes jumps over the fence, but I got this hedgehog.
Overall I saw and recorded 14 different types of mammals on my local patch. I know there are more as I have seen bank voles and different types of bats, but unfortunately I didn’t see them during June.
Appleton Wildlife Diary by Alex White 