I used to get a little Vole visit me in my original hide some years ago, I called him Vladimir, Vlad for short. It was at the time that Putin invaded Ukraine.

In my new hide, now just over two years old, I knew there were visits because any crumbs I spilt or sometimes I would purposely scatter a small amount of bird food would always have disappeared by my next visit. I assumed it was son/great grandson/ great great grandson of Vlad. But yesterday I was sat there and there was some scuffling noises from the corner, I looked across an just caught sight of a small brown mammal disappearing.  I have old pallets on the ground so that my feet are not directly on the ground, and I have laid some cardboard and thin plywood on top of the pallets so that lens caps etc don’t get dropped through the slats making it hard to retrieve them. This gap created by the pallets is an ideal refuge for small mammals.

I sprinkled a little bird food and sat quietly, then a little while later a small brown creature appeared, long nose pointing up and quivering, smelling the air, it proceeded towards the food, grabbed something and shot off. It was a shrew.

I then got my camera, I only had a big 100-400 telephoto with me so I wound it down to 100 and selected 1/80th sec f4.5 to get as much light as possible in the hide which is obviously quite dark inside. Sure enough after a short while the shrew reappeared and I snapped away. The noise of the shutter scared him off but I did get a couple of photos and in one you can just about make out that it is a shrew.

Now two things arise from all this.

Shrews are always said to be insectivores, well they are not, first off they eat any small invertebrate, so that makes them molluscivores, arrachnivores and crustacevirores along with insects, but I have also seen shrews in my back garden feeding on bird food composed of exclusively seeds, mainly sunflower hearts. The food that I scattered for this shrew did contain some dried up mealworms and fat pellets.

Secondly what sort of Shrew, the possibilities are Common Shrew or Pygmy Shrew, and both are quite common both are found in a variety of habitats, including open woodland. Both are small and dark brown. The Pygmy is slightly smaller and has a tail which is slightly longer compared to its body size. From my photo it is difficult to judge, it is, to be fair, only just possible to identify it as shrew, but I would perhaps go for Pygmy Shrew as you can see a tail and it is a reasonable size.

Here are a couple of photos of the shrew in my garden, feeding on sunflower seed, taken a couple of years ago.

I thought I should name him/her in the same way as I named Vlad, after a lot of thought I came up with Shrek. Not a lot of similarity to the large chunky cartoon character except for the first 4 letters of the name. Any clever suggestions on a post card to Alan Wa……