bosmuis

Jumping is not a crime

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It brings a lot of satisfaction I reckon, to photograph topics or subjects that remain rarely seen.

Maybe that is why I like to picture smaller mammals such as bats and mice. Unseen by most people, yet they occur in and around every house.

Pieter-Jan and I have been working on incorporating Infrared technology into mouse photography. The best of both worlds we think…

As such we tried to photograph jumping mice. The mouse must jump from one branch to another (convincing the mouse often takes a while!), thereby triggering the laser system, connected to a master flash which triggers all slave flashes.

The camera is operated in bulb mode.

 

Here are two images PJ and I made last weekend, showing a Wood mouse Apodemus sylvaticus.

 

Copy of goede muis

Fly my pretty

Copy of goede muizen

Jumping sequence “strobelighted”

 

“More traps catch more mice”

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as quoted by R. Janssen in 2012…

A few weeks ago we set out 100 longworth traps in search of mice.

Here are a few images of what we caught.

As in all mice photography, we created habitats in a sealed box and put flash lighting on it. There just isn’t any other way of photographing these rodents.

Wood mouse

Yellow-necked mouse

This species is closely related to the wood mouse, with which it was long confused, only being recognised as a separate species in 1894.

It differs in its band of yellow fur around the neck and in having slightly larger ears and usually being slightly larger overall.

Field vole

Field volges are one of the most common mammals in Europe, although you don’t catch them that often. They are found in moist grassy habitats and dig burrows, but you usually find them building nests above ground. They constitute an important food source for owls and other predators.