Island 2000 Trust Blog

Here’s a handy I2K invention, and made entirely from recycled birch too. These are Water Vole spoons. “Don’t they have cutlery of their own?” I hear you cry. Yes of course, but that’s not the point. These are for jamming into river banks water so that the spoon bit lays out just over the water; we bait them with apple, come back the next day and scoop up the droppings left over from the feast-on-the-spoon. Water Vole’s are really rather secretive and hard to survey for, but they do have fairly distinctive droppings and what’s more we create a little mud on the platform, Water Vole footprints

are excellent i.d.