Ever had a Vole in your Bath??

My Mammal Box HD is  working really well and I am thrilled with the footage that I am capturing. This is a project that will grow and develop over the next year or so as the removable ‘sets’ give me loads of opportunities to try out all sorts of different scenarios! You can find out more about this box and how I designed and made it on the page on my website by clicking the image below.

The main aim of this project was to recreate different natural type scenarios, where I could place food and film them interacting with the space. I have been experimenting with some natural Autumnal harvest; blackberries, elderberries, damsons etc to see what they like to eat and have captured footage of wood mice, bank voles and shrews in these spaces.

The idea of creating little home scenes has been a bit of fun and it still makes me smile seeing the voles sitting on a little armchair.  Tina, who has been creating these mini scenes for me, contacted me to tell me that she had made another one , after seeing the vole cleaning himself in our sitting room set-up. She arrived to discuss some more projects we have and brought out a wonderful bathroom scene!!! I could not believe the detail and how Tina had even made a little toothbrush and toothpaste for the bathroom shelf! This was going to be fun!

The bath was a perfect place to put lots of seed and the basket also provided a space. I lifted the toilet seat and popped a couple of peanuts in there… would the mice and voles find them???

Within just an hour of popping this new scene in, the vole was back in and, as predicted, sat in the bath! You can’t help but smile….. (You may need to turn the volume down a bit as I have not quite got the sound correct in this set up… make sure you select to watch it in 1080P HD as well!)

The vole even discovered the peanuts and opened the toilet lid!

This gave me another idea…. I am going to create some little  containers holding food to test the intelligence of these small mammals… can they figure out how to open the container to get at each food stuff? I am also going to do some experiments to see which foods they prefer. The possibilities are endless… so watch this space… quite literally!