If you're hoping to photograph or observe voles and you know they're present on a site, look for the little islands and promontories and shelves where they might pause to take a groom or to set up a latrine. Then you can station yourself nearby and wait.
3 comments:
Lovely photos! The voles here in Cambridge have lots of little waterside perches, created by the roots of large trees, on the wooded far side (their side) of the college boundary ditch. There's a nice ivy-clad "promontory" too (covering some sort of metal pipe), with nearby burrows in the bank.
My pics of swimming voles are never much good - too far away, and they always look grainy and indistinct, a bit like those dodgy old "Loch Ness Monster" pics..
Had great views of a vole tearing strips of bark from a twig on Sunday - it kept diving into an underwater entrance with it - possibly nesting material?
Concern though that the duckling numbers are rapidly going down, AND someone has seen a Pike in there... nasty, and a danger to the voles too?
Pike will take voles, yes. But they're a native predator, so ought to be in the balance. It sounds as if your bark-stripping vole was indeed nesting.
It sounds as if you'd get a lot of use out of a bridge-type camera with a really good zoom. Have you got a birthday coming up or some other excuse to treat yourself?
There's a thought - no birthday til December though!! I did actually get a fairly close swimming shot today, much better than any previous, so am feeling a bit pleased with that (even if the vole is nearly shooting off the lower right of the pic.. I had to be quick.)
Yes, I suppose Pike are all part of the ecosystem - hope I never see one seizing a vole or duckling though.
The first moorhen chicks have just hatched..tiny!
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