Mammalwatching in northern summer night

High latitude summer nights are light, especially when there are no clouds in the sky. Perfect for night time outdoor activities, including mammalwatching. 

Weather was perfect last night, +19° C and wind 0 m/s i.e totally calm. I started my trip at  22:45 and headed first  to fields of Sääksmäki and Ritvala, tried to find a Badger (Meles meles), which I have not yet seen alive this year, only some roadkills here and there. I parked in couple of spots where I have seen the Badger during previous summers, scanned the fields with my binoculars, but nothing, no luck this time. Just the European Hares (Lepus europaeus), almost in every field.

European Hare (Lepus europaeus) on the road edge.

In addition to European Hares, I saw also one Roe Deer (Capreolus capreolus) and one White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus). These three species belong to group of the most common, or at least most visible species in this part of Finland. I spotted the Roe Deer by bare eyes, and confirmed the observation with binoculars. At 23:00 there was still a lot of light and binoculars worked well. Later at night, around 23:45 - 02:15 was already so dark, that I used my Pulsar Helion XQ38F thermal scope to find mammals. Again, mostly the  European Hares, but also the White-tailed Deer was found with thermal scope.

White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the field. Thermal image.

While driving back to home through the forests, I spotted also three bats, single bats in three locations. I stopped every time and used my bat detector to identify them. They all were Northern Bats (Eptesicus nilssonii), the most common bat here.

Spectrogram of the Northern Bat (Eptesicus nilssonii)

This trip is basically an example of the very normal mammal trip, all other species are more or less bonus species. On what comes to find mammals, late summer is sometimes really difficult, because all grass and grain are full grown and mammals can easily hide very well in the fields and meadows.  Still, more you do these trips, more mammals you  will see. For example, I have seen the Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx) already twice this year, just by going out during nights.

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Writer

Olli Haukkovaara
Valkeakoski
Finland