Feb 19th, 2024

Author: donich_admin

A new piece of Donich wildlife…

Many years ago we had some plastic bins in our shed which we used to store seeds and nuts for the birds. Then we caught a field mouse in the seed bin and assumed that one of us had accidentally left the lid half off. A few days later, I opened the bin lid (which was firmly closed) and found no less than eight mice snarfing down seeds like there was no tomorrow. I carefully caught them one by one and released them in the garden – noting that they had knawed a small hole in the side of the bin.

So… We replaced the plastic containers with metal canisters, basically old-style dustbins, made of galvanized steel. Surely this would protect us from further “shed invasions” and so it appeared until a few weeks ago.

Going to give the birds their morning feed, I noticed that one of the bin lids was half off. I assumed that either R or I had left the lid off, but it kept on happening and we were sure we had been careful not to leave it off. We then suspected that some creature, probably a pine marten was getting into the shed and knocking the lid off before having a good feed. We checked all over the shed, but there were no marten sized holes.

So we put a field camera with infrared and movement detection into the shed – and caught this gentleman in the act.

At least one large rat. Strangely enough my mum had suggested that it might be rats, but I had poo pooed this idea because I thought a rat would never be able to push the heavy metal lid off.

I don’t mind Ratty a bit and he is welcome to a share of the seeds. He better hope he doesn’t meet Lucky on a dark night though…