Stars in Clay

Another day passed by, and it’s been another day of varied happenings at Foxglove.

We checked the footprints in the clay pads on our mink rafts. These are to monitor for the presence of American mink, an invasive species and voracious predator of water voles. So far, so good – no mink footprints or evidence of mink, but this clay pad from the mink raft in the scrapes shows lots of water vole footprints! In the top left of the photo is a particularly neat example of the classic ‘star shaped’ footprint from a water vole forefoot.

A walk around the site showed plenty of water moving through after the precipitation of various types earlier in the week.

Brian showed me this Amber Jelly fungus, Exidia recisa. This small but striking fungus grows primarily on the dead twigs of standing or fallen willows. 

We also carried on with our nest box maintenance: We installed some new replacement bat boxes. Thank you very much to Barry Evans who built and donated us a range of beautiful habitat boxes including some of the bat boxes we put up today! (Sorry we didn’t manage to get one of your boxes in an action shot for this blog).

We’ve continued cleaning out our bird boxes ready for next year. We remove old nests like this one as they can harbour fleas and other parasites, which could otherwise remain to infest birds using the box the next year. 

If you’re looking for a Christmas present with a difference, or something for that person who has everything why not sponsor a Foxglove Covert bird or bat box in their name? To find out more click here!