Animalslifee

In this video we take a closer look at, The European Water Vole - one of the UK's favourite mammals. Water voles were made famous by the book, the Wind in the Willows, where one of the main characters was a water vole named ratty. In the book, and subsequent TV series and films Ratty lives a life of leisure, but that is far from the reality of life for these semi aquatic rodents. Water voles are the perfect sized meal for many predators, growing to 22cm plus a tail and only to around 220 grams. It is this and there need for a very specific habitat that has led to their populations dropping by more than 90 percent in the UK over the last 40 years. One of their main predators, and a species that should not be in the UK in the first place, is the American mink. These playful relatives of the ferret, escaped and were released by misguided people from fur farms throughout 1960s and seventies. Unfortunately they are ferocious carnivores and are the perfect size to fit into water vole burrows. There are now national campaigns to control mink and it seems to be working as water vole numbers are increasing once more. As their name suggests water voles build their homes alongside standing or slow flowing freshwater and dig their burrows into the waterside banks. These burrows can go several feet into the ground and often include entrances that are below the waters surface. Water voles are herbivores and collect most of the grass and vegetation that they eat from along the waters edge. 227 different species of plant have been identified in their diet and they sometimes create piles of pre-cut, ready to eat vegetation outside of their burrows. Water voles do not have webbed feet like some other semi-aquatic mammals but they are expert swimmers, swimming both across the surface and diving beneath it. They can climb as well but this one seems to be a little bit out of practice when it comes to balancing, whoops, well at least no one was filming… Water voles breed from late march until the end of September and like many other rodents, this can be quite a rapid affair. Each breeding female can produce between 5 and 8 pups, which are born blind and fur-less, in a nesting chamber. These pups grow quickly and can fully weaned from as little as 14 days old. This means that the mother can breed again and it is not uncommon for her to produce 4 litters throughout one breeding season. After breeding stops, the water voles begin to increase their seemingly constant feeding regimes to build up food stores and fat reserves to survive the colder months. #watervole #UKwildlife #wildlifedocumentary Some of the footage in this video was obtained using creative commons attribution licences. The original video and its licence can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr65l...

How much do you know about Grey Squirrels. In this video I take a closer look at them and share everything you need to know about Grey Squirrels. Here is the script: Grey squirrels are one of the most familiar and well known mammals in the UK, so it may be surprising that they are not native to this country. They were first introduced from north America in 1876 and gradually spread across England and wales. Unfortunately, as the grey squirrel colonized, they carried with them a virus that was fatal to the native red squirrels. They were also far better at remembering where they had stored food and could eat a much wider range of food than the reds. This eventually led to them going pretty much extinct throughout the southern and central UK. A grey squirrels diet changes throughout the seasons and includes Acorns, bulbs, buds, fungi, nuts and roots. Occasionally in the spring and summer they will also raid birds nests for their eggs and chicks. They dont eat everything that they find straight away and will instead cache food throughout the autumn. This food helps them during the winter, when unlike a lot of small mammals they don't hibernate and fresh food may be in short supply. Grey squirrels are active during the daytime only. Throughout the night they hide away in a nest made of twigs, bark, leaves and grass. This is known as a dray. These are sometimes inside the hollows of trees but can also be constructed exposed in the upper branches or even inside lofts, attics and barns. It is in these drays that grey squirrels give birth to their young, from January to April. Each female will have between 2 and 8 young which are known as kittens, or kits. These are born hairless and blind and spend the first 7 weeks of their lives being fed milk by their mothers inside the dray. By the time they start to venture outside they are miniature versions of their parents, and after a further 3 to 4 weeks they are fully independent and begin to construct and use a dray of their own. In the wild, the average lifespan of a grey squirrel is only 1 to two years but in extraordinary cases they can live beyond ten years of age. In captivity this is even higher with one squirrel living to be 23 and a half years old. Their main cause of death is collisions with cars, but they can also fall victim to domestic cats, starvation and increasingly to predation from the recolonizing pine marten. No fact file about grey squirrels would be complete without at least a mention of their controversial reputation. Some people refer to them as tree rats and there are regular calls for both local and nationwide culls. There is an argument that culling them would give the native red squirrels a better chance of recolonizing and this has been shown to work on the isle of Anglesey. There the grey squirrels were completely eradicated and the population of reds went from less than 40 to more than 700 individuals. A second, and perhaps more widespread reason for calls to cull them is the damage that they can do to forestry plantations. It is estimated that grey squirrels cause more than £50million pound worth of damage to these plantations every year by stripping bark and killing saplings. Everybody seems to have their own opinion on the culling of grey squirrels, so please feel free to share yours in the comments down below. "Red squirrel [explored]" by hedera.baltica is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "New Born Baby Squirrels" by jaredhouliston is marked under CC0 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Wood pigeons are the largest and heaviest member of the pigeon family in the UK with some birds weighing more than 600 grams. They are found across the country, on farmland, in woodlands and are becoming ever more common around towns and cities. Adult birds are slate grey with several distinctive markings. They have yellow and white beaks with a blue and white patch on either side of their necks. They also have a faded pink chest, a white bar on each of their wings and a black band around the base of their tails. Until they are around 16 weeks old, young birds lack the neck markings and have a duller beak. Wood pigeons breed all year round and make a nest that is a small platform of twigs. These are usually in the crowns of trees but can also be on ledges of buildings and sometimes even on the ground. Each female will only lay 2 eggs at a time. These are white and around 4 cm long and 3cm wide. The eggs take 17 days to hatch and when they do the chick, which are known as squabs will be fed a special milk like liquid by the parents. The parents create this in a small pouch in their throats known as a crop and as such it is known as crop milk. As the squabs grow the crop milk is gradually replaced by whole seeds, nuts and vegetation and after 30 to 34 days they are ready to leave the nest. Once they do leave they are still fed by their parents for a few more weeks before they become fully independent. Wood pigeons are almost completely vegetarian and are often seen as a pests by farmers as they feed heavily on beans, wheat and corn. Each pigeon can peck more than 70 times a minute and fill their crops each day with food to digest over night. These crops can extend to be massive and can hold more than 200 beans, or up to 1000 grains of wheat. They are also one of the only species of birds that can drink with their heads held down. Most birds have to lift their heads in order to swallow but wood pigeons can make a suction. There are currently more than 5.4million pairs of wood pigeons in the UK and their numbers seem to be rising. The birds that are here do not migrate and rarely travel far from where they hatched but in northern Europe this is not the case. Each winter the birds that are there migrate south to spend the winter around the Mediterranean before heading back north for the spring. Although they are capable of these massive migrations they do not have the same inbuilt homing instinct of feral pigeons. The normal life expectancy for a wood pigeon is around 4 years but one wild bird that was ringed as an adult, was then found dead 16 years later. Its completely possible that this birds was 1 or more years old when it was ringed but for now, we can say that wood pigeons do have the ability to live to at least 16 years and 16 weeks of age. #britishwildlife #pigeon #nature

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