Waiting

I note the New Hythe Birder (see links, "Excellent blog") has already seen a water vole this year, and my friend on the Wild About Britain forum's spotted one too. What with this and Bill Oddie handling a vole on tv this week, plus a wv mention in the BBC Wildlife magazine, I felt all fired up to go looking for myself.
.

Did a huge litter pick down at White Lion Meadow - no trolleys in the water, but over two carrier bags' worth of rubbish all over the banks - and looked for prints and latrines while I was there. No luck, or at least, nothing definitely water vole. But I did meet a girl who told me she'd seen one up at the Tesco end a couple of days ago, and it had a brown (non-ratty) tail, so fingers crossed.

.

After that I went for a walk at Brick Kiln Farm to see if there were any signs there. As usual there were plenty of field vole feeding stations and droppings, but nothing I could have said for certain was water vole. Then, just as I was about to leave, I found this skull which I'm fairly certain is. The yellow teeth, which water voles use for digging, show this particular animal was an adult.
.

Hope I see some live ones in a month or two. It's hard work blogging about invisible voles.