2022 harvest mouse surveys
Members joined in with volunteers from Devon Mammal Group and SWLT to search for nests across Cornwall, regardless of the cold weather – finding 150 nests and 29 site records. This was a huge addition to existing records and reassuringly productive.
Dr Stuart Newson – Acoustic monitoring of small mammals
Stuart works for the BTO but his first love is bats and he has been working to develop citizen science as an approach to extensive bat monitoring – using static detectors and a cloud-based analytical tool (the BTO Pipeline) to understand the distribution of bat species. He has now developed a reference library of small mammal ultrasonic calls which allow a similar approach to surveying for species with characteristic social calls. This is particularly useful in the search for
Talk on Harvest Mice - Frazer Coomber
Frazer, the Science Officer for the Mammal Society gave us a wonderful talk about harvest mouse biology and ecology and the National Survey. His statistical analysis of results will form the basis of the national mapping going forward. If you missed his talk you can view the zoom recording on our youtube channel here!
