As mentioned yesterday combing using the sound lure and a live capture trap, this has already produced results overnight. Monitoring the trap over the last few days we have been aware of increased brush tailed possum activity since the sound lure profile has been switched to a possum sound.
As we been using the Timms Possum traps up until this point a decision was made to deploy a live capture trap in conjunction with the sound lure in an area where possums are clearly operating to see if the lure would encourage the possum to enter the trap. While this is only the first night this combination was tried, this has proven to be the case. A brush tailed possum approached the trap depolyment area and remained around the location for an extended period of time, and appeared to return later to the site.
During this time (a ten minute time frame) the possum approaches the trap location, enters the trap and removes the apple that was placed inside the trap. In normal situations the trap would be trigged by the possum standing on the foot plate, which would then cause the cage to close, trapping the animal inside.
Due to human error the trap mechanism was set incorrectly, which allowed the possum to exit the trap carrying the food that was used to bait it, and then eat the bait. With the trap set correctly, we anticipate that the possum that attempts to repeat the procedure will then be trapped.
Key to this deployment is the issue - of the sound lure attracting the possum but not repelling the possum, as can be deduced from the ten minute timeframe where the possum entered a standard trap and remained in the area (with the one minute delay on the sound lure this would have therefore activated ten times while the possum was in the area).
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