Mammals

[something about mammals, urban mammals and/or mammals in the UK]

Visual detection of animals and their behaviour

We have six camera traps across OpenLiving Labs, predominantly in the woodland and one in the riparian zone. These cameras run 24-hours a day, and are equipped with night vision too, so we are able to not only see what species we have at all times of the day the year round, but what they get up to at times where it would be difficult to manually observe them. Similarly, this is a non-invasive method of recording their presence and behaviour without disturbing them, although the camera is noticed from time-to-time!

These cameras do occasionally detect insects, but this is not the best way to record and count them. Our recording of invertebrates of the living labs can be found here.

A Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) inspecting the camera trap in the urban woodland at The OpenLiving Labs.

Other mammals such as Badgers (Meles meles), Roe Deer (Capreolus capreolus), Muntjac Deer (Muntiacus reevesi) and even Otters (Lutra lutra) have been captured regularly in our Living Lab. Below are some examples of the unique and interesting species we have recorded, with small video clips demonstrating how the cameras operate and night.

Badgers (Meles meles) playing at night on the night vision camera in the woodland.

A family of Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) passing through the woodland during the daytime

Otters (Lutra lutra) at night by the river, next to the floodplain meadow.

Examining these clips both helps understand urban biodiversity and what these animals get up to when humans aren’t directly interfering with their behaviour at the point of observation. If you want to contribute to the identification of species and/or their behaviour, have a look at our Citizen Science project page.