Saturday 17 March 2007

Waymills again
















Had a walk up Waymills again and was amazed to see prints all the way along. The latrine immediately left is near the culvert just before Station Road; the prints above that are under the bridge by what was the playground; and the prints by the brick pipe outlet are opposite Waylands Close - so there's evidence of water voles the entire length of that section of the Staggs Brook. After this there's a gap, no field signs at all where the brook goes along the back of Edward German Drive at the moment. Then another cluster by Tesco.
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We've seen this pattern before, though; you can have lots of water vole activity on one side of a bridge, and none at all on the other side, twenty yards away. But vole colonies move about and stretch and shrink as populations peak and fall, so an absence of signs in one patch doesn't mean anything other than there aren't obviously voles around that spot at the moment. It'll be interesting to look again towards the end of the summer and see where they've spread.
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Trolleys are unfortunately a problem even in this part of town, so far away from Tesco.

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