New Water Voles, and Polecat Kitts

This morning we placed a new family of Water Voles out on to our display island. These are from our breeding stock which we hold off view from the public. There were only two voles left on the island, both old males which were bred out there and extremely used to sitting out in front of dozens of cameras. However, in their old age, they have been seen less, and so it was decided to retire them off view and allow a new family to thrive and make the island their home.

Parents and four kitts were placed into the tunnel system of the island. We hope that the youngsters will grow up to be comfortable out in front of people, and if they don't the first litter they breed on the island certainly will be.

Yesterday we decided to change around our polecats in preparation for the Summer opening. Early in the year one of our females, Velvet, gave birth to 7 kitts. We separated the father from her when she started to get very aggressive towards him, and paired him up with another one of our females in an off-view breeding pen.

Now that the kitts are about 8 weeks old, we have moved them with their mother on display in one of our smaller mustelid pens. Here they will prove to be a great exhibit with the youngsters beginning to get really active and keeping their mother on her toes.

Eventually these young polecats will be relocated by the Polecat studbook holder, some of them may even make a return to the wild!


Over the next couple of days I will let you know about some changes with our Pine Martens and Wildcats.

Other baby news...

Along with other news, I will be providing you with updates on our badger cub, fox cubs and red squirrel kittens over the coming weeks. But first I thought I would mention some of our "lesser" known animals. It is quite easy to forget sometimes some of the smaller animals we have here at the Centre, but we have had a lot of other baby activity this year already!

Of course our deer have had fawns/calves again. Quite early this year too, the photo above is of a few days old fallow fawn.

Once again we have bred polecat kits, but this year it is to our new breeding pair "Storm" and "Velvet". Storm was a road casualty brought to us by the studbook holder, Lesley Palmer, to pair up with the very aggressive Velvet. After a lack of mating last year we questioned whether Storm was up to the job, but since he was such a handsome chap Lesley and I decided to give him one more crack at it. He hasn't disappointed, and Velvet now has 7 young kitts to look after.

Our display pair of hedgehogs have been a little less active than normal, outside the talk time, and this is due to them having a couple of hogletts to look after. "Lemming" and "Erin" sired young last year too so are experienced parents, and these young hedgehogs will be placed on a release scheme later in the Summer when they are of a nice weight.

And once again the BWC is home to baby rabbits. Earlier this year we replaced the three rabbits we had on display with our off-site colony, which had tamed down very nicely. These have proved to be a far better exhibit showing both natural eating, grazing and digging behaviour comfortably in front of the public. Earlier this month they produced there second litter of healthy babies showing that they truly have settled into their new home, and now the youngsters are often seen out in their outside run too, during the day.

Current Research at BWC

The BWC helps out with many research projects every year, another important and vital role of any zooligical collection, and after posting about our work with Conservation Dogs (supplying pine marten scats for training Luna), I was surprised to hear of so many of our visitors interest in this side of our work. Therefore I will let you know of any other interesting work being carried out here, and with that in mind...

Currently we have work being done with our Stoats and Weasels, and a couple of projects with our Harvest Mice.

Hair sample tubes from the Vincent Wildlife Trust have been put into our stoat and weasel enclosures to test if they actually work. The idea is these smaller mustelids will go through the baited tubes and leave hair samples on some sticky tape. Once the design has been made successful, these tubes and then be relocated to the wild  as a surveying technique to see if these animals are present in a given location. So far they have collected hair well, and things look positive for a wild application.

At the same time as this we are trialing a similar device, on a smaller scale, with our harvest mice for the Surrey Wildlife Trust. This is still in its initial stages, and will yet be seen if it is a viable option for wild work.

One project that has been running for a while in our harvest mice is special feeding stations. Some of you may have seen them up in the past few weeks. These devices are hopeful of collecting harvest mice droppings while they feed off the ground, as a way to show a populations exists. Once the design has been tinkered with we will then relocate these feeders to our reserve, where a known population exists, to see if they still work. And finally they can then be used in the wild as a way of establishing if harvest mice are in the area.

Exciting animal news coming up over the next few days and weeks so keep in touch.