Going For The Gold!

In keeping with the spirit of the Olympics, we’ve turned our job of small mammal trapping into an Olympic event.  We trapped for one week.

Here are the medal counts:

Gold - Kangaroo mouse: 0

Silver - Meadow Vole: 7

Bronze - Deer Mouse: 43

No mammals were caught more than once.

Dabbing a little shoe polish on the tummy of a mouse.

This way we know if we catch this individual again.

The Meadow Voles were very laid-back and seemed to enjoy having their tummy rubbed!

We had three plots of 40 traps each.  The traps were set in a 5 trap x 8 trap grid. 

It was interesting to see the pattern that emerged.  Most of the mammals were caught in traps on the outside of the grid.   

[The parcels include one area where the grasses were cut for hay last year, another where cattle were grazed, and a third where no activity took place.  These land uses result in different amounts of fresh and decadent (decaying) cover.]

The field with no activity and decadent cover caught the most mice with as many as six mice caught in a night.  In the wet field where cattle are grazed, we never caught more than one vole and one mouse in a night, and in the hay field we caught two to four mice each night.

For more information see the July 27th blog post.