Thursday 16th January 2020

An early start as Lea and I drive out of Bern towards the Grande Caricaie, the largest area of marsh and associated wetlands in Switzerland comprising eight nature reserves. Our aim is to locate two radio-collared wildcats by means of radio-telemetry. Seven wildcats, five females and two males were captured using box traps baited with valerian lures and collared between January-March 2019.

Wildcats have only relatively recently been discovered in this part of Switzerland. It’s thought that these animals have dispersed from the Jura, though this is unknown.

A large part of the study area is situated primarily within an intensively managed agricultural landscape. The fields are normally planted with oilseed rape, brassicas, maize, carrots etc. Within, this area ditch and reedbed habitat can be found along with small areas of woodland.

The study area also encompasses the Fanel, a nature reserve that is important for wintering birds and is made up of extensive reedbeds, ponds and woodland, looking out on to Lake Neuchatel.

The total number of wildcats in the study area is currently unknown but may be around twenty animals. So far no hybrids have been recorded in the area. The wildcats appear to be spatially separated from domestic cats whether this is due to natural behaviour with the cats occupying different areas, whether domestic cats actively avoid wildcats, whether the wildcats and domestic cats simply co-exist or if there are other mechanisms influencing the relationship is unknown.

Lea has undertaken very intensive habitat surveys in the area to try to determine what makes the study site suitable for wildcats. The data has yet to be analysed. Aside from this aim, the general purpose of the study is to follow the expansion of the wildcat in Switzerland.

The radio-collars can be tracked once a day for two hours. At the start of the study the wildcats were tracked every five weeks, now the collars are coming to the end of their battery life they are tracked more intensively, every 2-3 weeks.

Lea and I are very successful and locate the first wildcat signal within five minutes of switching on the equipment in the intensive agricultural area.

We then moved on to the Fanel and picked up the signal for the other wildcat that we were searching for almost as quickly.

The downloaded data, as well as providing fixes for the wildcats movements over the last few weeks, provides activity data. So, den sites can be determined from the data. The wildcats in this area are known to use log piles, silage bales, hay bales and barns amongst other features as den sites.

I then swap cars and join Matthias who is working with Lea to try to determine what the relationship is between wildcats and domestic cats in the area. He has 10 collared domestic cats which he follows and 20 camera traps which are checked every two weeks. This particular study is very new with fieldwork only starting a month ago.

We spend the rest of the afternoon replacing batteries and SD cards in the Cuddeback camera traps and moving a few to more suitable locations.

Matthias drops me off at Kerzers train station and I head back to Bern and then back to Urs and Christine’s house via the tram.