Yellow Neck Mice

I spent a little time in our hedgerow the other morning, before we were open to the public, and was hoping to get some photographs of our field voles... the problem was the time of day and bad reflections on the glass. It made it very difficult, so I decided to move on to our yellow neck mice and wood mice in the more shaded part of the hedgerow, and where the reflections were more manageable.

These two mice are vey difficult to tell apart just by looking at them, the yellow necked mice do tend to be a little bigger, but from a visual point of view the big difference is their yellow band across the neck... hence their name. I was hoping to get a photograph of both types showing their neck, but only kind of managed with the yellow necked. In fact only one of the photos below is of a wood mouse.

This is the wood mouse. You may be able to see a couple of slight differences, but really it is the size and neck... neither of which you can see from this photo... which shows you it is a wood mouse rather than a yellow neck mouse.

And a couple of field voles that stopped for a second to see what was going on. I will have to try again at a different time of day with these.

Thanks for looking :-)

Pine Martens

Our pine martens have been getting a little more active over the beginning of the year as Spring arrives, and Summer nears. Our old pair Bonnie and Clyde are a little less active, but younger pair Drogo (above) and Daenerys (below) have been brilliant.

Drogo is much more acitve in the afternoons, and great fun around feeding time. Daeny is usually out and about all day, and often spends the morning sleeping on the top of here main tree... very easy still for people to see her.

It was only the other day I was looking through some of my photos of pine martens, and realised I didn't have too many of Daeny and Drogo, so spent a bit of time with the pair of them one evening. Hopefully get a few more over the summer when the foliage is back out in colour in their enclosures.

Below are a few more of the two of them...

Thanks for looking :-)

Bluebells

It all comes around together so quickly... playing otters, dancing adders, and of course the bluebells in the woodlands on our nature reserve. Some very lucky people on our owl days have managed to take full advantage of this, and taken some amazing photos, and over a few evenings a couple of weeks ago I went down to the woods with some of the keepers and a couple of animals to have a go myself.

Ash and Oakley, the two tawnies we hand reared last year from a couple of days old. This was the first time they have been tried out on the reserve, and they were true stars! So much so we are thinking of adding them to our owl days so photographers can photograph two tawnies together. 

So much fun watching these two... One settled quickly and loved every minute, one made it clear he wasn't as happy to be there... can you guess which is which :-)

Athelstan in the bluebells. He is still a newbie to the idea of photoshoots, but was a real pro!.. except wanting to spend all his tie with his Dad Tom, and keep jumping on to his lap :-)

All the hedgehog photos are of Hugo.

One of the tawny brothers on his own above, and Florence below.

Fagin the little owl.

Of course, a couple of Ethel our European eagle owl too.

Thanks for looking :-)