Most of our mammals are nocturnal so it is not easy to see them going about their business. However, they leave plenty of clues in the form of footprints, food remains and droppings, and with a bit of detective work you can usually find out which mammals visit your garden at night.
One easy way to discover which animals explore your garden during the night is to put down a patch of damp soft sand and look for footprints in the morning. You can encourage the animals to walk over the sand by leaving various foods in the middle. Bread flavoured with aniseed is said to be especially attractive to mice and other small mammals, and you can also try fruit, sliced carrot, grain and a portion of pet food. These should attract a variety of wildlife which will leave plenty of tracks for you to interpret. Even beetles and earwigs leave footprints if the ground is soft enough.
Colin Varndell
A badger’s footprint is easily identified by its breadth and by the long, chunky impressions of its toes – usually five, although the inner toe does not always leave a mark.
Another way to detect the presence of small mammals is to put some bait in the centre of a sheet of paper that has been smoked over a candle. Little feet pick up the smoke particles and leave clear tracks.
CJ Wild bird Foods/David White
Footprints are easy to spot and follow in the snow, although they are usually less clear than on muddy ground. This is the print or slot of a roe deer, up to 5cm (2in) long.
Larger mammals, including badgers and deer, often leave hairs behind when they brush against thorny bushes or pass through or under wire fences. It is usually possible to identify the hairs. The long outer hairs of the badger, for example, are dark in the centre and pale at the base and the tip. Because these animals tend to tread regular pathways, finding tufts of hair will show you where to watch for them at night. If you can’t see the spot from the house or the garden shed, try rigging up a simple hide. An old, dark curtain hung on a bamboo frame can be quite effective if you cut small holes for your torch and binoculars. The animals do not like bright lights and you are less likely to alarm them if you cover your torch with a piece of red plastic. Of course, image intensifiers or infra-red binoculars are the ideal equipment, but these are much too expensive for most garden-watchers.
‘SQUIRRELED’ PINE CONES
Pine conesstripped like this indicate that squirrels have been busy. Mice make a neater job of removing the cone scales.
Michael Chinery
HOW TO CRACK A NUT
Hazel nuts are eagerly sought by many birds and mammals and each species has its own way of opening them. Look for the opened nuts under a hazel tree if you have one. Alternatively, scatter some nuts on the ground and wait for them to be opened – but don’t be surprised if most of them are taken away for opening and eating. Nuthatches and woodpeckers, for example, wedge the nuts into bark crevices and hammer them open.
Michael Chinery
A squirrel splits a hazel nut cleanly in half by nibbling a little hole at the top and then using its lower front teeth to prise the two halves apart.
Michael Chinery
The bank vole gnaws a neat hole either in the top or at the side of the nut, leaving an extremely clean edge on the outer surface of the nut.
Michael Chinery
The wood mouse gnaws a hole in the side of the nut but it always leave a distinctive ring of tooth marks around the outside of the hole.