May UMAC Surveys: Spotlight from Southampton MammalWatch
Hello once again Mammal Lovers, it’s been ‘camera traps are go’ for us here in Southampton, and we’ve been loving all the cute pics!
As we near the end of our Mammal’s Tail at SotonMammalWatch HQ, we’re still looking for good finds. As the weather warms up (Thank you Mother Nature) and deadlines die down, mammals on campus seem to be everywhere!
First on the books for this month is a muntjac deer on 3rd May, having a good ol’ look at the camera… perhaps she’s considering joining the team for next year?
Next up was a juvenile roe deer found on the 7th May, wouldn’t you say this snap is so lush and green? I’ve personally been getting very excited about the beautiful pictures; I want to make all of them my desktop background!
Speaking of which, I think that this next picture is a major contender…
So we had a slight bit of confusion with one of our pictures, which I think was due to us projecting our wishes onto the camera, but long story short we thought one of our camera trap images was a mustelid (which would’ve been stoat-aly awesome). It turned out that it was just a squirrel, like this one below, which, might I add looks quite like he posed for it.
The image was also featured in a weekly Twitter game, #namethatmammal.
That brings me onto this equally photogenic picture of a fox found towards the end of the month, which was photographed taking the same route back and forth across the screen on a number of consecutive days. This just goes to show that positioning on regular routes can make all the difference when using camera traps to look at these beautiful animals. Now we can get an idea of his territory, behaviour, daily routine – it’s quite exciting really!
It doesn’t feel like it’s almost over, it’s weird to think that in a few weeks I will be writing the final #SotonMammals blog post for you all (for this year, mind you), but stay tuned – we will be having a big round up post for our final send off for the mammals of this year!
See you then!
This is the Southampton Team, keeping you in the loop of our Mammal’s Tail.