Field guide to the most commonly encountered mammals and birds

Here, we provide some basic information regarding commonly observed species (plus some others about which we have had queries).  

Feel free to contact us by email if you have any questions regarding species you have encountered on the site.

For more information about mammals, we recommend the Mammal Society's species hub, here. For birds, excellent resources are available from the RSPB (here) and the BTO (here).

 

Show Common Species Show All Species

American mink

Scientific name: Neovison vison 

Family: Mustelidae

Appearance: Mink are similar in shape to stoats and polecats but are dark brown all over. They are much smaller than otters.

Body length: 60 cm Tail length: up to half of body length.

Weight: 0.5-1.5 kg

Natural history: Mink hunt on riverbanks and in the water, eating mammals, birds, fish and crustaceans. They live in dens near water. Males are highly territorial.

Mink were introduced to the UK for fur farming. Since then, they have become widely invasive. Mink are a major threat to British water voles, because unlike native predators, they are both small enough and good enough swimmers to enter water voles’ waterside burrows. In mainland Europe, they also threaten the critically-endangered European mink.

 

 (C) tsaiproject (shared under a CC BY 2.0 license)

Joomla! Debug Console

Session

Profile Information

Memory Usage

Database Queries