3 Comments

  • mattinidaho

    Great stuff. It is interesting that he uses sunflower seeds to draw them in — I would not have thought that would work.

    My brother once set a Tin Cat (multiple live catch trap) in his garage. When he checked, there were 2 legs, blood and other mouse bits — and a very happy shrew. The unfortunate mouse had evidently gone into the trap, and the shrew followed and ate it.

  • Jon Hall

    Yes I was surprised too. I usually just use sunflower seeds now in my traps and i catch shrews occasionally but I thought it was the general stinkiness of the traps that draws them in, rather than the seeds. In the UK they used to use mealworms for shrews which makes a lot more sense.
    PS. When he wrote he mixed sunflower seeds with leaf litter and humus I had to double check that humus is, in fact soil and not a Turkish dip 🙂

  • Mike Richardson

    It’s not unusual to see Common Shrews taking the seed from bird feeding stations in the UK, however they often die in live traps without mealworms or other insect larvae to feed on.

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