Black Rats (1 Viewer)

Whilst Lundy is one of the few strongholds for the black rat, the species is global and widespread in southern Europe and present on other islands around the UK and Ireland (Twigg et al, in press).

For example, black rats occur on:

__ all three of the Shiant Islands in the Inner Hebrides;
__ on Lambay Island, off Dublin, where brown rats may also be present;
__ recent records from at least one of the islands in the Firth of Forth;
__ they are possibly present on an island in Wexford Slobs, off the SE coast of Ireland;
__ they have a recent history at Kew on the Thames, although their current status there is unknown;
__ they may also be present on the banks of the Thames at Tilbury docks
__ and possibly still on Sark and Alderney in Channel Islands.

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Probably extinct in the area, despite being present from about the 3rd century onwards. It may still be found from ship-borne introductions in to the ports and warehouses of Liverpool. The last known locations in Liverpool (in the late 1970s to early 1980s) were the sites of St John's Market in the City Centre and a warehouse on the Waterloo Dock, now converted into flats - but they were still present in at least one warehouse across the Mersey in Birkenhead as recently as the late 1980s. Identification is not straightforward as there are black forms of Brown Rat.

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