Short Video of a Feeding Adult Vole

An Annoying Tale of Five Barriers

 Barriers and sandbags thrown into the water at White Lion Meadow car park.

A comma butterfly. Below, an adult and a baby water vole at Edgeley Road.

Shropshire Council have been pretty responsive to our requests to heed water voles; for instance, they no longer use weedkillers near the water courses and they leave a good margin of vegetation when they mow. However, I'm disappointed that they've repeatedly placed barriers at White Lion Meadow car park and then left them, knowing they'll be thrown into the brook and just replacing them with new every time. There are now FIVE barriers in the water, plus two sandbags. All this to fence off a bit of work on the bridge that I could have done myself in twenty minutes if I'd had permission. I've tweeted them to ask if they can get the barriers out and fix the bridge as soon as possible. We'll see what they say.

Meanwhile the colony at Edgeley Road seems to be fairly robust and the water more or less clear. I'm continuing to monitor it, though.

Edgeley Road vole

 Emerald damselfly, Whixall Moss.

Below, latrines at White Lion Meadow car park. I saw a nesting vole there today.

Below, male Emperor dragonfly, and various lizards at Prees Heath.

 Painted Lady

Purple Hairstreak (female), Prees heath

 Ringlet

 The state of the polluted stream now. It looks clear but may still contain high levels of ammonia etc.

Adult, juvenile voles and babies are active at Edgeley Road right now.

Monitoring the Pollution at Edgeley Road

 At White Lion Meadow, the voles are using, as a territorial marker, the barrier that's been thrown in by vandals.

Roosting Silver Studded Blue butterflies on Prees Heath.

Meanwhile, at Edgeley Road, the mat of debris is breaking up in the polluted brook but it's still smelling and you can tell it's not clean. The EA are working to stop more chemicals leaking in.

I'm seeing three juvenile voles and a large adult on that particular stretch at the moment.

Whitethroat

Slow worm we saw on Whixall Moss

In My Pocket

     Water voles at Edgeley Road. The pollution is looking very slightly better. I tried scoop out the worst on this section tonight. 

The vole in photos 2 and 3 tried to get into my pocket to see what was in there.

Below: water voles are using the barrier that's been thrown into the channel to place their latrines.

Some lizards at Pant, near Owestry.