Polecats Still at Tring in the UK

After two weeks of prevarication I finally jumped on the Eurostar from Paris to spend today in Tring, just north of London. For the past few weeks a family of Polecats have been seen regularly at the College Lake Nature Reserve – 1.5 mile walk from Tring Railway station along the canal (just by the village of Bulborne).  The youngsters are growing fast and are becoming harder to see but they were seen this morning at both the Window in the Woods Hide briefly, and from the adjacent Barn Hide for a bit longer at 11am today.  I saw at least one animal from the Window in the Woods hide at about 1.30 after a 1.5 hour wait.   It was only 3 metres from the hide window when it came to the pond to drink.  And I will upload a photo or two tomorrow. So they are still around and findable.  One of the four kits appeared to be dead in the pond in front of the Windown in the Woods hide today – but there are still at least 2 youngsters left.

Beautiful animals – and its fun to go on a mammal twitch.  Only the second time I have had the chance to go chasing a mammal that isn’t likely to be watchable for long.  And though the journey from Paris was a bit of a trek it was considerably closer than the 1600km round trip in a day I did to see for my first mammal twitch, a Southern Elephant Seal near Melbourne in 2003 … ouch.  It was that day I realised my hobby was becoming an obsession 🙂

Jon