Mammals are one of the best known and most loved groups of animal found in London gardens. What's more, you don't need specialist skills to identify many of them... hedgehogs, badgers, grey squirrels and foxes are all great examples of iconic garden mammals that are easy to identify.Despite an abundance of people to potentially submit records, mammals are still under-recorded across London and every record is important to inform efforts to conserve and better connect the current population. A common misconception is that because an animal is commonly seen it must be well recorded, so reporting sightings of foxes and grey squirrels is still important. So we are launching a camapign to get records of 4 distinctive mammals that visit gardens... so please send us your garden mammal record!
Click here to submit your mammal records to the LNHS iRecord activity
Meet the mammals
Red Foxes sit right at the top of the food chain in the UK as apex predators (alongside owls, eagles and otters). London's foxes are far from shy and are far from restricted to gardens and green spaces... it's not uncommon to see them raiding bins (this apex predator is equally happy scavenging) and strolling across car parks. Although they can live up to 9 years, most red foxes will live for just 1-3 years, with road accidents being the most common cause of death.
Hedgehogs have seen dramatic national declines in recent times, and are now much more elusive in London. Records are few and far between, particularly in more urban areas. You can help hedgehogs by ensuring that you've got access from your garden into neighbouring gardens and greenspaces through introducing hedgehog holes or tunnels into fences and walls.
Grey Squirrels divide opinion. Some love to watch these agile mammals find wonderful and inventive ways to get onto the garden bird feeders. Others would like to see the eradication of this non-native invasive species and a return of their smaller native relative, the Red Squirrel. Regardless of your opinion, it's hard to miss these mammals and the LNHS mammal database should be brimming with Grey Squirrel records!
Badgers are the UK's largest mustelid and often go unrecorded due to their nocturnal nature. Given the sensitive nature of badger data and its potential use in informing criminal activity, we have not disclosed the location of the video below and ask that you mark badger records as sensitive when you submit them through the LNHS iRecord activity.
How to get involved?
We're asking Londoners to take a photo of the mammals found in their garden (wild animals only please, no domestic pets or livestock) and send in their records so that we can improve our record holdings.
We will happily take records of nay species that can be identified but are particualrly keen to hear about any sightings of the following garden mammals:
- Badger
- Grey Squirrel
- Hedgehog
- Red Fox
To take part simply upload your photo and fill in a few details to our iRecord activity: https://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/join/london-natural-history-society
Find out more about iRecord and the LNHS iRecord activity in the recording of the 'iRecord LNHS' Virtual Natural History Talk below.
The results so far...
To date we've only received 22 records of mammals through our iRecord activity, with badgersonly reported once. The graph below illustrates the records that have been received as of 19th September 2020.
Author: Keiron Derek Brown
Date published: 26/07/2020 / Last Updated: 19/09/2020
