On the Saturday 25th November, Malmesbury and District Natural History Society, in partnership with Wiltshire Mammal Group, Salisbury & District Natural History Society and Tisbury Natural History Society, delivered two owl pellet workshops, with the brilliant Skull Bloke Ric Maurice.
The aim was to increase records of small mammals and also to support the Mammal Society’s ‘Searching for Shrews’ project to see if the Greater White-toothed shrew (an invasive species) was present in Britain.
21 people attended our local event in Lea near Malmesbury, receiving training in the ID of small mammal remains in barn owl pellets, and then analysing pellets.
In all, pellets were analysed from 40 locations across the county – many people took additional batches of pellets home and will continue analysing and honing their skills.
What did we find? Whilst Field vole, Wood mice and Common shrew were the main species identified, smaller numbers of young brown rat, Pygmy shrew and Bank vole were also found, and a lucky few also found Water shrew, Harvest mouse, Yellow-necked mouse and a bat. Together, these data will add considerably to our knowledge of these species’ distribution.
Notably, we did NOT find evidence of Greater white-tooth shrew; monitoring of this potentially invasive species is one of the objectives of this work.
With thanks to the many farmers, landowners and barn owl nest monitors who collected pellets for us, particularly the Lewis Raptor Group in South Wiltshire, and Robert Hayden and his team of the SPTA conservation group (east) nest box team, members of the following farmer groups: Chalke Valley, Wilton Estate, Salisbury Plain, Pewsey Downs and Wylye Valley.
You can find out the latest results of the project on the Mammal Society website.
