House Martins leaving home

Everyone enjoys a sunny day but for the the Stapeley Grange team it provides a window of opportunity to release some of its wildlife back to the wild.  When releasing house martins we are ideally looking for fair weather for three or more days.

Following rehabilitation in the hospital our house martins are transferred to an outside aviary where they are given an opportunity to build up their flying skills and to acclimatise themselves to the various weather conditions that they will have to deal with when released.  Giving birds time to prepare for a return to the wild is very important especially for migrating birds that travel back to Africa for warmer weather. So before they left us we needed to catch them up to give them one final check over, to ensure they were fully fit for release.

To enable us to catch the birds we used a special mist net which is very similar to a volleyball net but virtually invisible so they fly into it.  It sounds easy but house martins are very clever and skilled flyers which is great in the wild but makes catching them up very tricky!

                        

Once each individual had been checked over they were placed into a container. Once we had caught all that were being released we took them to a suitable location onsite.  And then came the best part of the job; opening up and allowing them to fly off.  I knew they would be far too quick for me to take photos of them flying away so I filmed them instead.

Many of these birds were brought to us as orphans over the summer.  They had to be hand fed with meal worms every hour so it was a joy to see all that hard work and patience pay off, it was fantastic.

By Michelle Bite

Sponsors of Stapeley Grange Wildlife Centre and Cattery

  To donate to Stapeley text and our orphans: STAP70 £2 or £5 to 70070

Following our Foxes

An exciting part of being a Wildlife Assistant is being involved with the releases and the post-release monitoring work.  We are now in year 2 of a 4 year project that is looking into survival rates of fox cubs following release.  This year 6 cubs are being fitted with GSM collars which will collect important data on their movements post release.  I was very privileged to observe the collars being fitted and was in charge of recording all the details of each fox as they were being fitted and checked over.

Taking measurements.

Recording weight.

In order to fit the collar the foxes were given an anesthetic; this gave us an opportunity to take important body measurements and for our vet to give them a full health check before their return.  The team had to ensure the collars were fitted correctly so as to firstly avoid the fox pulling it over his head but secondly allow for a little more growth.  The collars where then sprayed with a bitter spray to deter the foxes from chewing them, which had been a problem last year.

Giving a health check and checking its condition.

Spraying the collar with bitter spray.

  

We will now be able to monitor the foxes post release which is always important from a rehabilitation point of view, to ensure that we are returning them back to the wild, fit and able to survive and integrate back into a wild population.  It will be great to see if our foxes decide to stay where we release them or move on to establish their own territory as they tend to do in the wild.  

Using GSM collars is an important step forward in terms of monitoring fox cubs. Although expensive, they will allow us to collect important data without having to track them on a daily basis.  Using GSM collars is also far less labor intensive than using VHF collars.  Information gathered from this project is likely to be very useful to anyone involved in the care and release of orphaned fox cubs and will hopefully give us all peace of mind that we are giving them all a fair chance of returning back to the wild successfully.

The collar will allow us to trace the fox by satellite.  

By Michelle Bite

Sponsors of Stapeley Grange Wildlife Centre and Cattery

  To donate to Stapeley text and our orphans: STAP70 £2 or £5 to 70070