Relocating Mammals

For the past several weeks I have been watching for the Dragonfly Nymphs that have been living in one of the many ponds and pools locally. My wish was that when they emerge I would be able to film them as they emerge from the chrysalis stage as adult dragonflies. All was set for this to happen, the emerged as nymphs an while I missed that stage I have visited everyday so that when it happened I could film them. However on Wednesday I had to go with some other people to visit another rich wildlife site to offer some aid and advice. So I was not able to go to the pool on Wednesday or on Thursday as I was away. On Friday, my investigations just showed the empty chrysalis case, the ghost skin of the dragonflies. They had emerged while I was away. So unless I can find more this year it will be next year before I can get that film.

However the trip away was more than worthwhile. The Ministry of Defence here in Britain has several sites where for safety reasons the public are not normally allowed. This means that the natural history on these sites flourishes free from disturbance by most human activity. Further, the military people who manage this land are very sensitive to the needs of the wildlife most of the time too.

Therefore, being allowed to carry out a limited survey in one of these areas is a privilege.

However, the main work that needed to be done was catching rabbits. For reasons that will become obvious, the army, following advice, had built what was effectively an artificial burrow sites for the rabbits and our job was to live catch the rabbits so they could be moved to this site. It was all done by a very traditional method of using purse nets and feeding a ferret down the burrow system, the rabbits exit the burrow and into the purse nets. Our role was much more that of wildlife specialists with the job of finding all the entrances. Or exits as they become, as if you fail to net even one hole that's where the rabbits will emerge.

It took the two days, but we must have caught ninety percent of the rabbits and moved them to their new home. They now have three acres of fenced in land to happily live and breed on. Now the reason for this is simply that there is a bird of prey that has been nesting near the site. The problem was that during exercise it was flying in to take the rabbits and endangering its life. So a novel solution was devised to create an alternative nest site, this it used this year and the pair raised two chicks. But they persisted in hunting within this danger zone. So to protect this rare bird decision was taken to move the food to a safer place. This had worked reasonably well with work done in the past and this work I was involved in was the finish of that.

The work was one of the most unusual things I have done, but it gave me a chance to see a bird I have never seen before, a Golden Eagle.

Had I been allowed to take or use a camera on the site, I could have had some wonderful film, but while that was not possible, I at least will have the memory of seeing this magnificent bird.