It was a crisp evening, for August. The air was fresh and the sky clear – just past 6pm, we had a few hours of sunlight left. I was joining Keeping it Wild, our youth group at the Trust, for a small mammal trapping session at Gresham Marsh, close to our Skylarks Nature Reserve in West Bridgford.  

Whilst the Wildlife Trust does not own this land, we help to manage it for the Environmental Agency. They are aiming to have it designated as an official nature reserve, which will help them to get funding to look after the land and its wildlife, as well as protect it from any unfavourable development. To do this, baseline surveys need to be carried out to establish what wildlife is there.  

Lorna, our City Nature Recovery Officer, explained that a simple presence survey will do the trick for this, meaning that we just need to find out what species are there, without the need to collect lots of extra data to work out the exact population sizes of any of the species. 

So off we went, delving into some bushes off the path and carrying on to reach where Lorna and Michael, our Nature Recovery Manager, had already set some live-traps earlier that day. They informed us that there was a possibility that none of the live-traps would have been tripped yet, as sometimes mammals need to get used to something new being in their environment before they will go anywhere near it - but to our surprise there were a few! 

The live-traps are set up with straw for warmth, then food – a juicy piece of fruit like apple to provide moisture, as well as grain for most omnivorous mammals, and then the special treatment of fly pupae for shrews, which are strictly insect eaters (insectivores). Mice might eat these too as they aren’t too fussy! The door is left open, and once a creature goes inside to get the food, the door will close behind them so that we can come along and identify them, before returning them safe and sound to their habitat. All the live-traps are also numbered, to keep track of them so that none are missed, ensuring the highest welfare for the small mammals.

So – back to our tripped live-traps (that’s a mouthful) – what had we found! The excitement was building as Michael explained how to carefully open them up and check for small mammals. We pop the trap into a see-through bag, take out the entrance tunnel, check there’s nobody in there, and then carefully tip the live-trap until our mystery guest appears. Everyone handling the mammals needs to wear a mask and gloves (a precaution to prevent airborne viruses such as Coronavirus from being transmitted to the animals). 

Our first mammal was a little bank vole – which may be one of the most adorable creatures I have ever seen. He seemed fairly calm as Michael carefully scooped him into our viewing box to have a look and identify him. As you can see everyone was very happy to meet him!  

Next, we had a wood mouse, also known as the ‘kangaroo mouse’ for reasons that became very clear after jumping out of Michaels hands (twice)! It was safe to say that these small mammals were very different in temperament to our chilled-out bank vole friend earlier.

Once we had identified the species, we let them go – making sure they were back exactly where they were caught, as they all have their own little territories. We then reset the live-traps. As we walked past the traps to leave, we heard tapping around inside - a certain mouse decided they wanted more dinner and hopped back into the live-trap as soon as we put it back! 

We set up the rest of the live-traps across a variety of areas, some near a nice reedbed, where we were hoping for water shrews. Shrews have super high metabolisms and need to feed constantly – so some traps have a tiny hole that shrews can escape from if they need to. 

As we left, we decided to go onto a lovely boardwalk area and listen out for some bats. Bat detector in hand, off we went. We ended up hearing a common pipistrelle, and a soprano! It was really interesting to hear the noises that come through the bat detector, and strange to think of how much noise is happening in our natural world, that we can’t hear and have no idea is happening!  

At about 9pm, it was dark so we left, ready for our early start in the morning to see what we had captured overnight.  

Bleary eyed at 8am, it felt like I had never left – but I was eager to see if we had captured anything else – specifically a shrew! And as we headed over to the reedbeds…we were in luck! We caught two common shrews! They are very interesting looking creatures and reminded me a lot of those ‘magic wiggly worm’ toys I would have as a kid – especially their little snouts and how quickly they move around (at first when I watched a video of it back I thought it was sped up!) 

Another few bank voles and mice later and we were good to go. So, all in all, we left having met an array of adorable small mammals, which was a lovely way to start the day - and it felt great to know that we had also contributed to the surveying that may turn this beautiful little pocket of nature into a reserve.