Let's Talk About Poo...and I do not mean the bear!

 It saddens me somewhat to say that for 45 years I have had to study scat. Poop. Poo or whatever you choose to call it.

Lynx, puma, leopard, fox (lots of fox poop), birds, domestic dog and cat and a great deal of hedgehog poop. So when a member of a local wildlife group asked which animal had left scat on the allotment I told her it was hedgehog. Another member said it looked like fox while another stated as fact that hedgehog poop was bullet sized (no calibre was mentioned) and shiny. 

In fact both the fox and hedgehog can have similar scat depending on what they eat. Insects such as beetles and you find the small tar looking poop. A neighbour once told me that he had been in a feud for years with a neighbour because "He keeps throwing bits of tar into my lawn -look there!" and he pointed. I looked and got closer and pointed at it: "This?" I asked. "Yes" he said angrily. I pointed out that it was hedgehog poo.  He still hated the neighbour.

I opened my front door earlier this year to see what appeared to be a long cat scat...I looked again and rea;lised that it was an unbroken, moist (not dry) hedgehog poo -I even caught it doing its business on camera! The adult hogs, and now the two new youngsters drink every night after food from the water bowl as they have a mix of wet dog food and dry cat food (cat food was for some of the local strays originally). 

I have seen the small, tar-like droppings, longer unbroken ones as well. Just as with domestic cats and dogs the food given can change the "end product".  I have seen the "norm" fox scat only in the wild but in urban areas they have a good diet but I have seen foxes leave behind hedgehog like poop.

So, for your scrutiny I give you sample images!

Fox

Hedgehog

Darren Tansley

Terry Hooper-Scharf

Which British Garden Wildlife Is Protected?

 I was asked whether any of the wildlife we find in a British garden is endangered or protected? Here is the summary of what you need to know.

Slow-worms (Anguis fragilis )are protected in the UK under Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981).

Hedgehogs are protected by British law under Schedule 6 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making it illegal to kill or capture them using certain methods. ... Additionally, hedgehogs are on the Scottish Biodiversity list as 'Watching Brief Only' requiring monitoring to prevent decline.

Hedgehogs ( Erinaceinae) are already broadly protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The Government continues to be concerned about the decline in hedgehog numbers and notes the recent State of Britain's Hedgehogs Report 2018, which suggests that the urban population is stabilising.

A "specially protected wild animal" is: a badger, bat, wild cat, dolphin, dormouse, hedgehog, pine marten, otter, polecat, shrew or red squirrel. The law defines certain other species as vermin and landowners are permitted (or, in the case of wild rabbits, are required) to cull them.

"wild cat" refers to Felis silvestris which were thought to be mainly surviving in Scotland but there are reports from England and Wales -some are probably re-introductions.

The Dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius)

Pipistrelle bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) of which I get a few over my garden.

There are, of course, insects, lepidoptera and many wild flowers that are also rare or protected or are no longer being cultivated.  Obviously some flowering plants and bushes encourage insects and...it is basically a little eco system you create in your garden.

I ought to mention that you may get a feral cat in your garden. These are domestic cats who have been dumped or born from dumped cats and you have to remember that they are wild and try to pick one up may not end well for you -cat scratches need surgical spirits. However, they will learn to tolerate your presence (basically like most domestic cats!) and eat scraps or food put out for hedgehogs. I mention these cats because they will do something most domestic cats will not: they will tackle rats -food. They will clear mice -food. Birds, etc are casual kills because why put the effort in to catching a bird whe there is easy food around?

Some U. S. cities are realising the benefit of feral cats for pest control -safer than poisons.

Foxes will also take rats and mice as part of their diet. Hedhogs are not being wiped out by foxes. Foxes, badgers, hedgehogs feature in many videos and photographs eating in the same area -often with domestic cats (again IF the cat tolerates them!).

Badgers (Meles meles) are said to be the main predator of hedgehogs and rescues will not release hogs into badger territory. Again, where food is scarce, yes, however, where food is plentiful both eat in the same area (though I would not encourage that).

Whether beetles, moths, butterflies, birds or mammals I would encourage anyone interested to simple search online for "How to make your garden wildlife friendly" and you ought to get a lot of information including for water features for frogs, toads and even dragon and damsel flies to use (and mammals need water too!)

UK National Carnivore Advisory

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/245424620670933 

More Pet Food Withdrawn

 

Please Report Dead Fox Cubs

 

As an update on my post regarding fox cub deaths...

I have now been informed of two fox cubs found dead in Bristol gardens on Monday 14th June.

That one was in BS9 and the other in neighbouring BS10 raises a few concerns as does the fact that there were no visible injuries. To put it into perspective BS9 and BS10 probably has a fair sized fox population and we know cub mortality can be high so two deaths out of dozens of cubs is not significant unless more are reported.

The Health and Safety Executive can collect bodies and have them examined for cause of death. The possibilities are disease or a virus which vets would need to be alerted to. The others include pollutants or pesticides or even poisons. Once a cause of death can be determined action, if necessary, can be taken.

So, please, if you find a dead cub photograph it as you found it in situ. Take a photo of the head/face and full body shot then please bag the body and then get in touch with me so that I can report it to the HSE to collect.

If the cause of death is a disease or virus then being alerted to this quickly could save other foxes.

Thank You

Cat Food Warning

 

Cats -Predating MILLIONS of wildlife Every Year? UPDATE

It appears that freedom of speech, especially when citing facts over insane statements, does not exist on social media.  You can read what I wrote below and I was very polite.  Howver, I have been removed from the group, I assume for not being part of the falsifying facts that birders want.  Meh

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 Face Book's Self Isolation Bird Club recently spiralled out of control as someone posted that any bird or mammal brought home by a pet cat or dog as a "gift" needed to be taken to a vet for treatment. The post was borderline crazy.  However, it soon turned into an anti-cat rant from members!

One even insisted that cats were an "invasive species" and had no place being outdoors.

No one seemed to be willing to correct this utter tripe.  So I stepped in. It may be that my post will not be approved for various reasons so here it is.

"I'm a little concerned that a recent post on pets bringing in "present" birds etc devolved into anti cat propaganda. Firstly, let's get one fact straight: the -THE- biggest killer of birds and small mammals are human beings. I have seen birds such as blackbirds and thrushes that suffered from eating slugs that had ingested slug pellets (a cat did not put those out).

"Rat and mice poisons that should really be banned from sale to the general public have made pets -cats, dogs as well as larger wild mammals ill or caused death and are used by some mentally unhinged people to poison foxes and badgers. No cat was involved (otherthan as a victim).

"I did a paper back in 2000 on feral cats and wild cats and I also consulted with the then chief veterinary officer for the Cats Protection League and we both concluded the same thing after research; cats were not killing vast swathes of wildlife each year -if you think about it logically, if "millions" are killed each year why are they not extinct? Even some wildlife experts are changing their minds on this becausethe greatest factor in the loss of buird numbers are the hedgerows, trees and other nesting areas that have been destroyed -even while the birds nest (which is supposedly illegal unless you are a local authority such as Bristol City Council). No cats involved.

"WHY are hedgehogs now facing extinction? Destruction of habitat, the use of poisons and....no cats involved.

"What I and others found is that cats do not really need to hunt for food, not even feral cats; people put food out for their cats, for foxes and hedgehogs and this is a free meal. Feral cats also hunt and kill rats and mice which has been found to be far better a solution than poisons (Chicago recently released feral cats to deal with its rat problem). Domestic cats, as I have observed, hunt mice and rats. If it is a sick or injured bird of course a cat will take it. Look at the number of photos posated of owls and hawks here -especially of ones with dead mammals and pigeons so if swathes of birds have been destroyed by cats....how are all the predatory birds eating and breeding?

"As for the silly "cats are invasive species" -the evidence of early domestic cats in Britain comes from an Iron Age (in Britain, about 800 BC–AD 43) settlement called Gussage All Saints, near Dorset in southern England. Those were domesticated whereas we have always had wildcats -we even had lynx until humans hunted and killed them poff (no help from cats apparently). So, over that period to time here we are in 2021 and...the birds and small mammals are still here! Odd?

"Birds also kill birds. I witnessed one robin kill and intruder robin. A few minutes before writing this a neighbour called me out as a wood pigeon was stunned -it had been attacked by adult wood pigeons. I have seen up to 20 magpies attack and ground a sparrowhawk and had I not intervened they would have killed it and I know someone who has observed that.

"Cats will pick up a dead mouse or rat or bird and take them home having NOT killed them. But these would be counted as having been 'killed by' the cat.

"It goes on and on and the numbers allegedly killed by cats is a "guesstimate" you take what so many households tell you then you work out (roughly) how many people have or might have cats and then you multiply the figures. It is NOT science but very rough estimates.

"Of course, it makes people feel better if they can blame something else for what they did. Hedgehogs are NOT being slaughtered by foxes -the drop in number is down to humans. Bird number as well as other species numbers that drop tend to be more down to environmental damage caused by...humans.

"I've studied felids and canids since 1976 and the one thing I have learnt is that people will talk nonbsense and pass the blame on and the "fall guys" are usually the canids and felids."

To prove my point of it all being a "Guesstimate" this is taken from Domestic Cat Predation on Wildlife By Michael Woods, Robbie A. McDonald and Stephen Harris:

"To estimate the order of magnitude of the total numbers of animals that may be brought

home by cats in Britain, we first estimated the population of cats likely to bring home prey of each group. This was achieved by multiplying the estimated cat population, here taken to be 9 million, by the proportion of this sample that brought home at least one of each prey type (Table 3). Then, for all the cats that did bring home at least one of each prey category, we calculated the mean and 95% confidence intervals of the log-transformed data. The number of prey animals brought home by all cats in Britain was then estimated by multiplying the estimated population of cats that retrieved that prey type by the back-transformed means and the associated, asymmetric 95% confidence limits. In order to be sure of the confidence intervals for this estimate, it was derived from the records from households where all prey items were assigned to individual cats, rather than the returns from households where the kills of several cats could not be distinguished.

And that proves my point.