In Ninewells Wood I have a couple of Bird feeder’sand as you can see  one which contains a mix of general, but good quality, bird food has below it a pile of logs, which I of course positioned there. If you look carefully you will see that in amongst the logs there are some lengths of black plastic drain pipes. These were put there to provide ‘hidey homes’ for small mammals or maybe reptiles or amphibians.

Some of the birds that visit are quite fussy and like to select which particular morsel they want and chuck the rest on the floor. Nuthatches are particularly fussy, probably throwing 90% of the food away before they get what they are looking for.

However this is not so bad as there are a range of birds that visit to feed on these reject foods. Some like the Stock Doves, Blackbirds  and Dunnocks will only feed on the ground, others like the Chaffinches, Robins and Jays prefer to feed on the ground but will sometimes take food direct from the feeder.

Recently I have seen a bank vole, in fact I think there are two but they are in and out so quickly that is difficult to know but they have been regular visitors and last week there were definitely a pair of Shrews.

There are two small voles, Bank and Field, they are both common but I think what I have are Bank Voles as they have a more reddish brown fur on the sides. Their tail is supposed to be slightly longer than that the Field Vole which is also known as a Short-tailed Vole. However at distance and with them being so active it is not a very good characteristic for identification.

Shrews come in two sizes there is the Common Shrew and the Pygmy Shrew, again both are quite common and the name Pygmy is a bit of an exaggeration as it is only very slightly smaller than the Common Shrew, so a better name would be the ‘Slightly Smaller Shrew’. I am guessing that what I have is the Common Shrew, although I have read that Pygmy Shrews are more active in the daytime and Common Shrews more nocturnal. So who knows?