This is a good time of the year to plan towards watching and recording wildlife in the summer months.   Some wildlife watching is seasonal such as butterflies and wild flowers.  Others can also be seen during the winter such as birds and animals  and the latter is the group we shall look at this week.    Most  animals are difficult to see at any time of the year  mainly because of persecution by man, in some case for centuries.    These include the fox,  pine marten and even the badger.   The end result is that these are mainly nocturnal and rarely seen during the day.    The majority of sightings are therefore mainly of roadside casualties especially with badgers.   Perhaps above all the animals to be persecuted the fox comes top of the list and yet they still manage to survive and even seem to thrive in many areas.

There are other ways of avoiding predators and the mole is a good example as it  spends most of its life underground.   Others are simply secretive  such as the otter.  Some books say the otter is mainly nocturnal but if they are not disturbed too much  they can often be seen during  the day particularly when they are feeding.   I have watched an otter  feeding in a reed bed in the middle of the day on Loch Bunachton just south of Inverness.   Hare and rabbits feed during the day although they are both more active by night.  They rely on their speed to escape predators.  The rabbit with its fast but short run to its burrow and the hare for its sheer speed over open ground and the camouflage it has when crouched in its “form”.  This form is a depression on the ground and when they lie   flat with their ears pressed back over their back they can be very difficult to see.

Fortunately  for the naturalist animals leave many signs in the countryside.   Tracks in mud or sand, or for that matter in the snow of last week, are always a tell tale sign.  Droppings can be critical in identifying  animals such as badger and otters.  I rely on all the different types of signs more than sightings of the animals themselves.  I use the best book on the market for this which is “  Animal Tracks and Signs” by Preben Bang et.al. reprinted in 2011.    We may tend to think that we know almost all there  is  about animals especially the red deer, roe deer and sika deer but this is far from the case.  Then there are other animals such as the recently introduced mink that is still causing havoc with aquatic birds and animals such as the water vole.    Another nocturnal animal  is the hedgehog  that now seems to be in a serious decline in numbers.  To give readers a good idea of our current knowledge, or in many species the lack of, then  buy the latest  “ Atlas of Highland Land mammals”  edited by Ro Scott and published in 2011.   This is available  from the main bookshop in Inverness.    If you have any records of animals in the Highlands then  they will be very welcome by Ro Scott, email address.  Ro.Scott@care4free.net.   Next week I shall look at wild flowers, particularly  orchids.

There seem to be some  mysteries about frogs in their breeding colonies this year and it started when the frogs should have  been moving.  They were heading out from their winter quarters,  under stones and in holes in the ground, towards their traditional breeding sites.  These sites vary considerably from loch and lochans to drainage ditches and garden ponds.  The type of breeding  sites can  have problems particularly  where the  frogs lay their spawn in shallow water that may dry up. This often seems to happen but this is compensated  for by the sheer number of places they choose.   One mystery is that records suggest that frogs and toads are now choosing the same  breeding sites where formally they seemed to choose different  sites.  Nobody seems to know why this trend is happening.

The main mystery this year was  just when the frogs started moving and why, in some colonies, the numbers were so low.  Frogs will hibernate in a wide variety of places and if the winter weather is mild they may just stay in the water.  They can take in enough oxygen through their skin to keep them  alive in the torpid state of hibernation.  However, this is fraught with problems  as if the water ices over for any length of time there is just not enough oxygen in the water and many will die under the ice.  Unlike toads,  that will mostly hibernate in one area,  frogs tend to widely disperse from  the breeding site.  Then when the weather warms up in the spring they move out to the water.  This just does not seem to have happened this year as very few frogs were on the move at one time.  What prompts the initial move is a rise in temperature and rain and most frogs will move in a day or two days.  Perhaps this year the mild weather lasted for several days so we did not see so many as it was spread over several days.

However this does not explain why the number of frogs at some breeding  sites were so low  and, more significantly,  the number of clumps of spawn were well down at a number of  sites, including some garden ponds.  What makes this easier to assess is that one female will lay just one clump of spawn.     So if you look at these early enough, before they grow and start to join together,  one clump will mean there is one female.  An idea of the numbers in a colony  can then be compared from one year to the next.  There is no chance of mixing this up with toads spawn as their habits are quite  different.  Toads lay their eggs in long strings that they wind round submerged aquatic plants. If the breeding site  has deep water, which with toads is often the case, then the spawn is difficult  to see.  Indeed it is often the case of just not knowing a site has been used by breeding toads.    Once the frogs’ spawn has hatched there are many predators that take their toll.  This may be fish even as small as sticklebacks, to dragonfly  larvae and the losses may seem significant.   Even when the tadpoles have left the water in what  may seem  countless numbers to us then the predators are there  waiting,  especially birds.  However, so many eggs are laid that even if a very small  proportion are successful then it is enough to keep the overall frog numbers  constant.