Identify Owner of Scat

Seth Brundle

Anyone able to identify who left this on our patio this evening (in Leixlip). It is about 5cm long.

I'd have thought it would be too big for many birds that visit our garden. Doubt it was a neighbours cat. Hedgehog would be doubtful.

The Continental Op

Looks like fox to me but wouldn't expect the colour except when its blackberry season.

Boardnashea

Ivy berries? Something is providing the lovely colour.

Seth Brundle

My OH reckons it is from a wood pigeon, of which we have loads here. I didn't think they could leave something that large though

bazza1

Does you neighbour like Ribena?

The Continental Op

OP can you give any sense of scale. If that was fox I'd expect it to be in the order of 50-90mm which would choak a pigeon. Don't forget birds only urinate anything else is regurgitated as a pellet.

Seth Brundle

In my OP, I said it was about 5cm in length.

We (and neighbours here) have plenty of ivy with berries

The Continental Op

So I'm still going with fox, it has no bird pellet like features about it and hopefully your neighbour isn't a Ribena drinking Pygmy.

Other possibilities are hedgehog and badger. Most of the pictures online for fox show something quite different but I know their scat changes massively depending on diet.

Hedgehog can't be sure of but size can be up to 50mm, badger normally makes a scrape and poo's in that rather than just crapping on your patio.

NSAman

Looks like Fidelma in Number 34 who is on Ozempic had a bender

Boardnashea

I was listening to Chris Morgan podcast this morning about squirrels and pine martins in Ireland. "The Wild", really interesting podcast.

Could the above scat be left by a pine martin?

Where abouts are you Seth? Rural/urban?

Sort of spiral end to the scat sounds like what they were talking about.

Seth Brundle

I'm in Leixlip so would doubt it was a pine marten (unfortunately)

The Continental Op

If you think its a regular visitor then you could try a footprint trap

https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/resource/make-an-animal-footprint-trap/

A lot cheaper then buying a trail camera and easier to check than CCTV.

Boardnashea

Are you allowed to use a meaty cat for something like this??? 😁

That looks like a great idea. Great to get kids tracking things in the garden.

The Continental Op

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120499641#Comment_120499641

Lots online like this mostly aimed at kids but its still a good way of finding out whats visiting your garden without all the faf of cameras, batteries, SD cards and taking pictures of everything other than the animal your trying to photograph. I spent some considerable time trying to get pictures of Otters with little luck, but did get photos of a few 2 legged animals.

It can get quite complicated with some traps that catch hair samples of animals that walk through them so the hair can be DNA tested. Scat is also good for DNA testing but you need a university lab onboard to do it. Locally there was an Otter survey that checked the DNA in Otter scat, firstly to see if it was actual Otter scat (hard to miss it once you know what to look for) and then to see how many different individuals were in a specific area.

gzoladz

Pine Marten to me, they are quite widespread in Kildare too