Fouine required!

I've been contacted by another TV crew who are urgently trying to get hold of a fouine (humanely captured) so they can film it in a studio setting. It will be part of a nature film to be broadcast in December.


It has to be filmed in a studio and not in the wild as they are trying to capture a specific behaviour. They are a professional wildlife crew, so no animals [fouine] will be harmed.


Crew are English but based in the Toulouse area, they or I (Cher, 18) will travel to collect.


For the Summer (I might have some other requests before then) :


The film crew would also "like to film hornets in vineyards" probably because the filming is about France wildlife and "vineyards are very French!"


Also Asian hornets attacking a beehive/apiary... that shouldn't be too difficult to find!


Hornets will be filmed on location (If you find the nest, I'll nuke it for free, after filming, by way of thanks!).


Please contact me if you can help.


Thanks


Rob


I used to have them in the roof but they seem to have moved on.

Have shared this on a few gardening/wild life groups for you

There's a bit of weather on the way in the next few days so see what happens. If the nest falls, you could spray it with ant powder (crawling insect powder). Best do it when it's dark though.

Had a look, thanks Robert. We're in the south of Charente Maritime between Pons and Jonzac so about 4.5 hours away from you, I think, so probably not economic to do. Hopefully the neighbour is chasing up the maire and the local people to get it sorted. I'll give them a nudge!

Brian, I was thinking more about the branch it's hanging from not surviving a gale. It's a very old tree that needs cutting back or felling but the locals seem to leave such things to natural forces, so we're expecting one night to lose our electricity and phone!

12 bore isn't the solution, you'll have 20 new nests very soon after.

I can reach 20m with my kit. Feel free to pm some photos and your location.

There's a video of me on The One Show regarding Asian Hornets in France with Mike Dilger. It's not on youtube so I'll have to plug my facebook page (if I'm allowed). Applicateur3d, scroll to 30 October 2015. Filmed in Ribérac and Cher.

Rob

You will be surprised how they survive gales, I think the beasties have learned aerodynamics over the hundreds of thousands of years they have been around.

She has no martens. Only eight ferrets and four polecat ferret crosses. Lovely creatures. Apparently the hunters around here shoot them on sight because of the amount of chicks and young animals they have away that they would be shooting as small game. Not beloved. I'll ask the other ferreter when I see him. However, try local vets because they get the oddest things. Today I was told about having to put a splint on the leg of a tropical frog recently...

Helen, since baby ferrets and polecats are kits you are logically right.

Re hornets, our next door neighbours have a huge nest at the very top of a very old, very tall ash tree overhanging the road, electricity and telephone lines. The nest was supposed to have been removed / nuked over Christmas but it didn't happen. When the tree was in leaf last season the nest couldn't be seen but now that it can the hornets are very visibly still active. Shifting it looks like being an incredibly dangerous job but if no-one does it we'll have another gale before long which will break the branch it's on, on the tree and bring it down. It's too high and too surrounded by other branches for a cherry picker and the branches it on are too thin for a climber. A twelve-bore has been suggested but I don't like that option much either! Great fun out here, isn't it!

Shame you didn't ask a few years ago when they were keeping our clients up scurrying around in the eaves! Pretty viscious things in a cage. I'm sure you will find plenty offers of fouines when they are trying to keep their fouinelets (kits?) fed from now to mid summer.

That's perfect, thanks I look forward to any news, I didn't think of asking a vet, doh. But I knew I could rely on SFN.

If things get intolerable dern ther way regarding vespers et al, I'm happy to come down, camp in a field and do a job lot. The only criteria is that you find the nests.

Rob

Not one keeper here can say that there has been more than about four days when bees were not active all winter. Yesterday with a lot of early flowers, mine were very busy. There has also almost not been a day without wasps all winter. If those colonies thrive and all of the queen cells produce then it will be crazy very soon. Plenty of work for you.

I'll pop in to see a ferreter this morning when I take my daughter to her riding class. She lives in the next commune three or four minutes from the stables and will certainly know whether there are any, especially tame ones about, she being a vet gets lots of wild animals as well as tame taken to her.

Thanks Brian

Has to be Stone Marten. I can't give the game away but sometimes they have peculiar nesting habits!

A tame one could be even better if you know someone who has one, as it will be trained to do what it sometime does in the wild...sharing it's world with humanity (vague huh?).

I treated my last Asian hornet nest on the 5th December, the only thing stopping carrying on was Christmas on a beach in NZ ha ha. I've been called out already this year. I guess the crew would prefer filming AF's in the spring/summer when all looks lovely and bees are really active

Rob

I'll have a nose around. We have pine martens hereabouts but stone martens are hard to spot, never seen one. Being a mustalid lover, but having her indoors who has banned me from having ferrets and polecats, I have to consult my couple of ferret owner local contacts. Both are mustalid fans. They may know somebody keeping one.

The Asian hornets gig. Probably about as far away as your closest keeper's hives. The native ones are active already, one stung my hand on Saturday. It could be a bumper year and our electrician says he has seen a couple already, he has about 40 hives and was going crazy back in the autumn. Hornets in vineyards, like bees then when they are flowering in May in S and SW France but then wait until autumn and the ripe fruit.