These burrows in this very top photo are a good distance away from the water course.
Burrows are neat, often with grazing around the entrance, and can be on the top of the bank or in the wall of the bank or underwater. For scale, think Pringles tube.
Sometimes latrines are hard to spot!
Suddenly there are heaps of burrows in the field off Edgeley Road. It's all looking quite good for this colony.
4 comments:
Wow! Nothing on quite such a scale here - but Alpha-male was very busy digging yesterday, in the watercourse bank that forms a boundary with one of the colleges - I watched him for about 30 mins from 5 p.m. - popping in and out of existing holes and then really going for it in the tunnel area behind the main row of holes. Had my binoculars and could see the earth flying, also had clear views of those huge and terrible-looking orangey teeth! He also had a few snack breaks, reaching up and stretching, in the way that voles seem to do, to get the tastiest shoots. I hadn't discovered the voles this time last year, so seeing this spring behaviour is new to me, and fascinating. Lots of daffodils out too, and ducks and moorhens getting frisky (ducks can behave in such a dreadful way, this time of year!). Alpha and a moorhen had a bit of a run-in, too, when the bird stalked along purposefully and stuck its beak down one of the holes.
Sounds like a heavenly afternoon!
So what do they do with all the soil? Every hole is left without a sign of excavated soil!
They apparently dig up from underneath, kicking soil backwards into the water. In the case of the far burrows, I suppose they'll be kicking it into previously excavated chambers. The lack of a spoil heap is one of the signs which distinguishes w-v burrows from rats'.
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