All this snowy weather is a good way to find out what’s out and about on Greystones Farm. Going for a wander on a snowy morning shows that a surprising amount of animals are about. The first most obvious sets of footprints are people and dogs; there's also evidence that a cat has been wandering around the farm yard, which is not surprising with all the mice and rats about.

Next I spot fox and rabbit prints, and a lot of rabbit poo. Walking a bit further on I spot some badger prints, and then fresh digging at one of the sett sites. As I turned a corner, I spotted something brown/grey standing in the middle of a field. It wasn’t a cow - the highlands are ginger - it was a roe deer! It stood and stared at me for a while, and then it was off.

Around the farm were also various birds and bird tracks. Several robins came to investigate me during my walk and a disturbed a buzzard from its watch tree. Despite the frozen ground, the moles still seem to be busy with lots of fresh mole hills all over the place.

Recently, while out and about with a volunteer, I spotted a stoat; a small gingery creature. Telling the difference between a stoat and a weasel can be difficult when you only have a quick glance of it, but the differences are reasonably simple.

A stoat is proportionally taller than a weasel (up to 31cm, rather than 26cm) and also has a much longer tail with a black tip. Both stoats and weasel squeak, however, a stoat will chatter while a weasel chitters (according to a Kingfisher Field Guide). I am not sure I can tell the difference between a chitter and a chatter, however I do know that “the weasel is weaselly distinguished from a stoat, which is stoatally different”.

Small mammals can be found in many places, especially if it is generally warm and dry. I was recently moving some fence posts from a store pile so I could use them and managed to disturb a field vole, which quickly scampered off.

Another field vole had a lucky escape the other day. While working at Welford Pools Nature Reserve with the other reserve managers, we started to burn a pile of brash, making a fire and transferring wood onto it. This turned out to be a good way of doing this as three quarters of the way through the pile of brash, the creature was found inside!

If we had made the fire under the pile rather than taking the pile to the fire, we wouldn’t have found him. The vole was retrieved and was placed inside the brand new hibernaculum that has been created at Welford Pools.


Greystones Farm in the snow by Andy Lewis
Weasel by Elliot Smith
Stoat by Rachel Scopes