Mid-September is full of drama in the mammal world. London’s young foxes, badgers, and hedgehogs are now independent, learning the challenges of survival and seeking their own territories. Fox cubs, now with adult colours, nap curled in quiet gardens, while young hedgehogs roam far at night in search of windfall fruit and insects. Badger families remain close-knit, raiding wasp nests and enjoying apples and fungi. The great spectacle of the month is the red deer rut: stags with burnished antlers strut and challenge rivals, especially in Richmond Park, while fallow deer prepare their unique palmate antlers for next month’s battles. Rabbits and hares graze peacefully, each with their own preferences, as autumn’s fruits and seeds provide plenty for herbivores. September is a time of restlessness, rivalry, and survival.
Check back on September 16th for the next autumn treasure.
Article
Mammals
London’s mammals are generally now coming to the end of their breeding seasons. This means that many populations are now at a peak with their inexperienced young learning how to live and survive alone, as well as finding a new territory to live in. This provides an easy autumn harvest for London’s carnivores such as foxes, weasels, stoats and possibly even otters. It is autumn’s fruits and seeds that provide another easy harvest for London’s herbivores and many can now be seen feeding on elderberries, blackberries and acorns throughout the month.
The most dramatic event in the red deer’s yearly cycle is their rut which starts towards the end of the month, weather permitting. The stags are now resplendent with fully grown burnished antlers ready to do battle. Park deer are generally larger and heavier than wild deer and they grow larger and more impressive antlers. In the wild, red deer rarely produce antlers with more than twelve tines, at which point they can be called royal stags. In park deer their number can climb to thirty and where there is some influence of foreign blood and old males not culled, it can soar to more than forty. In London’s parks, due to culling, we don’t now see such impressive antlers. Even so, whatever the number of tines or spread of horns on a male stag, being our largest land mammal they cut an impressive figure this month. A substantial number of them can be seen in Richmond Park. Wild red deer are now establishing their winter territories. There is little change in our park deer, except perhaps for a change in the leadership of the harem. Old defeated stags, which once controlled twenty to thirty hinds, can only look forward to a solitary life. After defeat they may go on to live ten more years. Looking old and still so handsome, it is not surprising they were at one time thought to live for centuries.
Fallow deer are still developing their palmate antlers for their rut which will come next month. They have now ‘frayed their stocks’ and no velvet can be seen on their antlers, this being the stage referred to as ‘hard horn’. No two antlers are the same shape. Differences can be genetic or due to food shortage as well as injury. A good head should have well developed brow tines, a sturdy beam and be widely palmate with a good number of ‘spellers’ or rounded tips. Plenty of leaping and chasing can be seen this month among the does and their fawns, especially in their ‘playrings’. Rarely seen roe bucks, after their rut are even more secretive and solitary than usual but like all our deer are now enjoying the hips and haws of autumn.
Young badgers are now almost the size of their parents. Badgers are one of the most family-orientated of all our mammals. Some juveniles will leave the sett to look for a new territory, whereas others will choose to remain. Even the ones that leave may well return later.
They continue to raid wasp nests and in September are partial to apples, blackberries and even fungi, especially if the weather is dry and it is difficult to find earthworms. As ever, you may well come across straw and grass on their trails indicating yet another change of bedding.
Fox cubs are now looking much more like their parents as they develop their full adult colours. Like their parents they now seem to trot rather than walk and twitch their tail more like a cat than a dog. Earths, being only used to rear young and act as nurseries, are now forgotten. Foxes are essentially surface dwellers and may now be seen sleeping during the day in one of their several lairs. These are often in London’s quieter and more abandoned gardens where they can often be seen curled up with their tail acting as a wrap and laid over their nose as they sleep.
Young hedgehogs are also now fully grown and being driven away by their mothers who may already be pregnant again. These young, especially the males, may wander up to two miles at night taking advantage of any windfall fruit they chance to encounter. Their diet has always been in dispute. On top of their usual fare of slugs, worms and insects they are also believed to take snakes, frogs, eggs and rats. Less likely is the story of them sucking milk from cow’s udders. They were persecuted for centuries as vermin but are now being encouraged by Londoners who have been kind enough to lay out regular food supplies to encourage them back into their gardens. Even though hedgehogs are wanderers they will keep returning, often in numbers, to any safe place where they are regularly fed.
If rabbits or hares are seen this month they are invariably grazing. Rabbits can happily graze a down to less than an inch as there are so few plants they find distasteful. Their activities don’t interfere with hares who prefer to live in longer grass where they eat the leaves and shoots, leaving the grain for mice.
