Tuesday, March 14: Roe deer trapping

This morning I joined three of the Grimsö field workers to watch them trapping roe deer. This involves driving around to the various traps set up around the Grimsö area, then recording the ID tag number and weight of the deer captured overnight, before letting them go. The data are used to estimate predation rates by lynx, among other things. Today they caught three deer in different areas: a fawn, an adult female and an adult male, all previously marked. They also captured two unmarked hares, so they put tags through their ears and a radio-collar on one of them. My description makes it seem as straight-forward as labelling a test tube, but there's obviously a lot of struggling and squealing going on during the whole process. It was all carried out remarkably efficiently anyway.

During the trip my camera stopped working. It's less than six months old and I think that I'll have to post it to Sydney to get it fixed. Words cannot express my annoyance... #%$&!

Here's the only photo of a roe deer that I managed to get.