A full version of this article appears in the magazine.

Watch a Iolo Williams programme and wildlife is standing up to be counted. Walk the woods and mountains of north Wales and it looks thin on the ground. Birds might show off in front of you but mammals are altogether more secretive. Many are nocturnal and the chances of seeing them are remote. However, their signs are there if you know how to read them.

 

Driving home alongside the river one night I came across my first ever otter, playing in an impromptu stream brought on by heavy rains. It splashed around for half a minute just a few feet in front of my headlights until it disappeared into the dark. I told a friend who said I should report it to my local biodiversity officer, so I did. Not long after, I received an invite to a mammal detective workshop organised by Mamaliaid Eryri, the Snowdonia Mammal Group.

 

The Group has embarked on an ambitious project to record the distribution of mammals in over two thousand 1km squares within the national park. That’s a lot of ground to cover so volunteers are being recruited and trained to assist. To date more than 3,600 mammal sightings have been recorded, with a sheep in every square apart from the middle of Llyn Trawsfynydd. The results are due to be published as the ‘Mammal Atlas’ in 2010.

 

How did you know it was an otter and not a mink?

We met in a warden’s hut and began with a pointed question “How did you know it was an otter and not a mink?” I muttered something about ‘Ring of Bright Water’ but these days I can be much more specific. Weighing up to ten kilos and five times heavier than the dark-skinned mink, otters are staging a comeback on every river in Wales on the back of significantly improved water quality.

 

So far I’ve not seen another otter but I have seen their ‘spraints’, piles of black tarry poo with fish bones and scales or bits of frog. They’re not too hard to find as they are unashamedly deposited in prominent positions, on boulders or roots of trees, in places defining territory. If nothing prominent is available, the ever resourceful otter will build a sandcastle and spraint on that!

 

My induction took on a new dimension as the speaker unzipped a spraint out of a plastic bag and passed it round for us to comment on the bouquet. Quite pleasant really, a bit fishy perhaps, but the classic description is like the smell of jasmine tea. The next bag contained a mink scat (another poo word) and this did the rounds much quicker - twisted and foul-smelling from a diet which is over ninety per cent mammal.

 

Pine martens and squirrels

We think we’ve got pine martens in Snowdonia but we can’t prove it. Our closest confirmed pine marten community is near Aberystwyth, recently proven through DNA analysis of scats. The archetypal scat is a hair-pin or heart-shaped twisted coil about the thickness of a finger, but they can come in many shapes and sizes.

 

Squirrels are found in many squares. Apart from seeing them or their drays, a good clue is the discarded pine cone which has been gnawed away to extract the nutritious seeds. The real professionals can tell you whether the squirrel was left or right handed – apparently 15% are left handed, the same proportion as humans.

 

Look what the cat dragged in

The drugs squad use sniffer dogs but mammal detectives use cats. In a project titled ‘Look what the cat dragged in’, cat owners are being recruited to report on the victims their vicious pets bring home. This will help to identify the presence of the smaller and more elusive mammals, such as shrews and dormice. The results will be compared with an analysis of owl pellets from the same area.

 

With just two more years of recording to go, there are plenty of gaps in the atlas to be filled. If you would like to join in, you will be most welcome. Field trips are organised every month and led by experienced guides who will provide basic training in what to look for and how to identify the various species. One of the guides is Rob Strachan, author of the ‘Mammal Detective’ – a superb book that is an enjoyable read from cover to cover and an invaluable reference thereafter.

 

To join in the fun of finding mammals and contributing to the Snowdonia mammal atlas, send an email to: Kate.Williamson@eryri-npa.gov.uk

 

Huw Jenkins is a freelance writer and community reporter for BBC Radio Wales as well as being a member of the Snowdonia Mammal Group.