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.