[rattrala]

I was fishing below Kintore a week ago and was amazed at the amount of mink on the river bank. Saw 4 seperate mink in about 2 hours.

They are very brave- (or is it  STUPID) managed to squeak!! one across the river to within about 10 feet before I think it saw me and turned away.( Some of you will know that I would be a hard object to miss on the river bank).  Manage to squeak it twice across the full width of the river before it finally dissapeared. ( Squeaking!! :- a sound imitating an injured prey animal such as a rabbit, predators such as foxes and mink , can be made to come closer to investigate, they think they are in for an easy meal)    

Also observed that although there were breading pairs of swans and duck on the river - no signs of any cygnets or ducklings. If the mink are taking these, I wonder how many fish they are also taking.

Have heard that it is proposed to trap mink on the Don , it was done on the river Ythan by the Aberdeen University and the numbers there have been greatly reduced.Believe that the newly appointed Biologist for the River Don Trust was the person who carried out the trapping on the Ythan. If he is now doing surveys etc for the River Don Trust , will he have time to do trapping on the Don?

Has any one heard of any trapping projects on the Don and who may be carrying this out? 



Lloyd

( edit = resizing ) Mike

[Dave Gordon]

Hi Lloyd

This has been passed to Jamie, the trust biologist, but one of the delays in starting him was waiting until he had passed on the details on the mink project to the person replacing him. It is my understanding that the Don is the final river to have mink traps set by the university, and that this will be starting soon. Trapping has been very successfull on both the Dee and Ythan and I hope that the successes can be replicated on Donside.

Although Jamie is fully employed by the trust, he is still interested in the Mink problem in the NE so i will ask him to comment on this next week

dave