The Scoop on Poop
As we head into the spring breeding season, the Te Korowai o Waiheke field team are asking the island community to keep their eyes peeled for something hairy, brown, and long but it’s not stoats they’re talking about, it’s their poo.
Being anti-social by nature, stoats habitually leave scat (another name for poo) on display near their dens to mark territories and, well, a poo at the front door is good a sign as any that they don’t want visitors.
“Stoat droppings are long, thin and twisted with dry bits of bone and feathers,” explains Principal Scientist for the Department of Conservation, Dr Elaine Murphy.
“If you’re out walking, you might see stoat scat placed conspicuously in raised areas, on top of rocks, logs or even on the top of trap boxes, which can be quite insulting if there is no stoat caught in the trap.”
Though it might not seem like it at first glance, it is good news for the eradication programme. Droppings help identify stoat presence in an area when often there are no other visual markers.
Scat-egories
As stoat numbers are dropping to lower density on the island, Dr Murphy says it’s an opportune time to mobilise community monitoring for scat as well as stoat sightings, to aid the eradication.
The field team keep their eyes out for signs while doing the trap runs, but in the race to zero, nine thousand pairs of eyes are better than twenty.
“A scat sighting means you know to look in a specific area and informs whether or not to change tact,” she says.
Having followed stoat behaviours for over 25 years Dr Murphy says they don’t like to leave scat anywhere near where they eat or sleep. They have territorial markers, the ones placed in conspicuous places, and then they have their ‘latrines’.
“Stoats tend to have around 3 or 4 active den sites at a given time,” she says. “If you find a whole pile of scat, you might find a wee hole nearby which could be the den entry.”
The amount of scat in a latrine is dependent on how long a stoat has occupied a den. Dr Murphy says there can be up to 100 separate droppings in a single latrine, and she knows this from hands-on experience. Much of her research has consisted of analysing scat to find out what their diet consists of.
“Birds, lots and lots of birds.”
Dr Murphy has many hats in the predator control and eradication space in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Alongside her work with the Department of Conservation, she is a science advisor for Zero Invasive Predators Ltd (ZIP). With much of her work focussed on stoats and their behaviour, she has many a story about the cunning creatures, sharing one in particular about an architecturally minded stoat with a love of fur finishings.
“One time in Fiordland we were radio-tracking a stoat that had made a home in a tussock,” she says.
This, however, wasn’t your average den. “There was a room where the stoat was living which was lined with rabbit skins, a room with bits of food where it ate and a room that was a latrine.”
“They are quite clean animals.”
With all her insight and knowledge into the secret life of stoats, Te Korowai o Waiheke is grateful to have her in the Technical Advisory Group who guides the island-wide stoat eradication.
To find out more about pests and their poo, check out https://www.pestdetective.org.nz
Dr Murphy caught a stoat on video marking their territory while testing lure trials with Lincoln University. View below!
