When Voles Grow Wings

Moves like a vole, is brown as a vole, but isn't a vole.

The ditch near Grocontinental, featuring...

...a latrine by the bridge

I'm sure these are water vole prints and not rat - White Lion Meadow
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It's still too cold to go out watching for water voles, but the evening was so nice I couldn't stay indoors so went in search of field signs. There are water vole footprints at White Lion Meadow (near Tesco), another latrine in the ditch by Grocontinental, and new burrows at Edward German Drive and the field off Edgeley Road.

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Thought I'd had my first sighting of the year! - but it turned out to be this wren. I can't tell you how many times I've confused wrens and voles, given they're often found in the same location and creep about in the same way. I've even seen wrens come out of vole holes. Most annoying.

Putting out the Welcome Mat

Construction going on in the same field as the water voles. Council planners have stipulated the work must not come any closer to the bank than ten metres.

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Ditch with piece of wood thrown in.

But closer inspection of the plank reveals a latrine. It's always worth checking floating junk if you think water voles might be in the vicinity.
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Water vole footprints further down the ditch, towards Grocontinental
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It's helpful when the first latrines appear, because colonies don't always stay in the same place from year to year so it can take a few weeks for me to work out where best to set up my camera. And there's no surer sign of water vole activity than droppings - it's like the animal's putting out its front door mat.

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The water voles in the field near Grocontinental seem to wake up earlier than the ones just across the railway line, so there are three latrines in this ditch already and I'm hoping to get my first vole sighting here next month. However, Grocontinental are busy with some building work not far away, so I hope the brook stays uncontaminated and undisturbed.

Des Ong's Lovely Voles

Active already, apparently! For more gorgeous water vole photos, go to desong.co.uk

Anxious Year Ahead

One of the frogs in my pond gearing up to breed.

Water vole footprints on the Edgeley Road side of the field near Grocontinental

Latrine from the same ditch

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This should be a happy time - first proper field signs appearing, and spring getting ready to unfurl. But this year will be the one where the council decides whether to re-designate two wildlife-important fields from their current 'green space' status to 'for development'. It shouldn't even be a consideration.

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Because not only does this have catastrophic implications for the water voles, it's extremely serious for the people of the town, too.

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Currently this very marshy land soaks up water like a giant sponge. It's a natural storage or holding tank for the surrounding area. However, if these fields were to be drained and concreted over, and additional water from new household or industrial use added to our natural, often torrential levels of rainfall, the likelihood of many Whitchurch homes flooding looks like a cert.

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And anyway, what developer would want to go to all the expense and time of getting in ecological experts to assess the land, trap all the voles, keep the voles safe while the houses are built, have ecological experts guide the developer to reinstate the water course to a standard where it was suitable for the voles to return? Which of course would have to be done by law.

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I absolutely can't imagine a less suitable place for building. So you have to hope commonsense prevails here!

Reading the banks

Field off Edgeley Road, location of burrow/slipway photos below.

Erosion reveals this old burrow in horizontal cross section.

Slipways or trackways running into the water from burrows.

Occupied burrow

Droppings at the railway bridge by Homebase, but are they rat or w-v? Both animals tend to make use of this handy brick!
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Still a few weeks too early for real signs to emerge, I'd have thought, though a fortnight of days as warm as today would wake the water voles up I'm sure. But even in the absence of breeding latrines and ostentatious feeding stations it's not too hard to see where the w-vs have been active. There are occupied burrows, for instance, with nibbled grass round the outsides, and lots of slipways into the water. Have to say, though, these don't always come out so clearly in photographs; they're actually more obvious in the field.

Field Voles 2011

My wood mice gearing up for spring.

Field vole droppings - note tiny scale.

Field vole feeding station.

Prints: could be rat or water vole
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At last a break in the rain, so I took a quick peep at White Lion Meadow and the field near Grocontintental. Everywhere's looking pretty sorry for itself: WLM is full of litter and the water level's quite high, but there were these prints just under the bridge and a rat/water-vole size run. Are they rat or vole? I can't decide, but worth keeping an eye on as this is where I saw a w-v nesting last spring.
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As for the ditch by Grocontinental there are some likely-looking burrows but nothing obviously w-v as yet. There were field vole latrines and feeding, however, which I post for comparison - f-v signs are a much smallerscale than w-v. (Think N gauge rather than OO, model railway enthusiasts.)

New Season

One of Terry Whittaker's fantastic videos to keep us going till the spring.

Matted reeds forming a protective carpet

Bank full of water vole burrows

Grazing round a burrow entrance

Typical vole-cut leaf
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Took a look at my nearest colony today not expecting to see much - ground too hard for footprints, there won't be latrines yet - but actually there was a fair bit of feeding and the burrows are obviously active, open and clear, often with grazing round the entrances. Surrounding the stream is a wide area of matted reed, perfect for hiding voles of all species, and I only had to part a few random stems to find whole networks of runs. It's a critical element of the site for these voles as the stream's so shallow there are no banks to speak of.