Saturday 7 September 2013

Good Practice, Bad Practice

 White Lion Meadow strimming - good practice as only alternative banks have been cut and only in short stretches

 White Lion Meadow vole presence

 Waylands Road strimming - very poor practice as the entire stretch has been done from the railway bridge down to Waylands Close, leaving the water voles there with no food or cover.

 Black Park Road - nothing touched, water vole bliss.

 Water vole feeding at Black Park Road.

 Otter spraint at Black Park Road.





Two juvenile Edgeley Road water voles

To our dismay, the banks along the Staggsbrook by Waylands Road have been stripped of cover and we're trying to find out who's done it so it won't happen again. In the same week, the banks at White Lion Meadow have been tidied in an exemplary fashion, so whoever's responsible for this deserves a pat on the back. Here are some ideas for landowners and councils on the right way to strim vegetation back in areas where water voles are present: http://www.durhamwt.co.uk/what-we-do/current-projects/water-vole/habitat-management-for-water-voles/

Update - see above. It's the Environment Agency who are responsible, and there turns out to be a lot more of it! Many thanks to Shropshire Council for helping me track down who did it.

Meanwhile I'm happy to report that the Black Park voles and the ones by the railway bridge at Homebase - on the Railway Cottage side of the road - are doing well, going by the number of feeding signs and latrines.

5 comments:

Le Pré de la Forge said...

Kate, what a wonderful blog!
I only discovered it while looking for a picture that must exist somewhere of a water vole with a shopping trolley...
for a blog post on our site about the presence of watervoles in the middle of a village near here.

But I have marked this page as a favourite because I have some 500 metres of millstream bank to maintain...
that is 500m per side...
and we can see 'our' voles from the kitchen and bedroom windows.
We have Arvicola sapidus here in France, the Southern Watervole... but it is also protected... not that the farmers and "riverside" gardeners give a hoot... but now I know the correct way to manage my banks in their favour...
and can tell my neighbours.

Very sorry to read of the recent loss of your Mum...
but given the content of this blog, she left a wonderful legacy!!

I will be back to read more...
thanks for the information,
Tim

Kate said...

Thank you! And I'm glad my posts are helpful. Are water voles as rare in France as in the UK?

Le Pré de la Forge said...

Kate, they are!!
And they are under national protection...

We see them because of our millstream that runs past the back of the house...
and when we first recorded them on Faune Touraine we received an email basically telling us not to be so "stoopid"...
but with photographic evidence to back it up, we were eventually believed...
and the recent recording of our sighting in a little village near here, famous for its roses, is probably about to do it again...
if you have time, take a read of our blog about our meadow "Le Pré de la Forge" and its environs...
do a search for Aigronne Valley Wildlife...
the latest post is about our sighting in the middle of the above village....
with hundreds of people all wandering around looking at the roses...
I have linked it to yours for readers to find out about "urban" Water Voles in the UK.
It will be there for a while...
you will see that, like you, we tend to blog when there is something interesting to report....
not just to "blog" everyday on any old thing!!

Kate said...

What a very cool blog! I love your black woodpeckers. And thank you for the plug.

Kate said...

For other readers of this blog, here is the link: http://le-moulin-de-la-forge.blogspot.co.uk/