Young and Old

Above: young adult vole. Below, an older one.

Can you tell individual water voles apart? I'm sometimes asked. The answer's no, unless they have a particular scar, but you can tell young voles from old even if they're the same size. The fur on this adult at the top is lovely, glossy and spruce, while the fur on this older adult is scruffier and there's some hair loss (mange?) around the eye.

Back to Voles

Water vole, with droppings in the picture for scale

Below, latrines and droppings

 Trackway with droppings

It's such a relief after heavy rains to go down to the brook and see fresh water vole poo. Flooding can easily drown voles, especially if the water level rises fast in a narrow channel. But when the monsoons finally stopped and I went down to the field, there were more latrines than I've seen all year, so even though I didn't see any actual voles I knew they were OK.

Then I checked tonight and saw two.

Vile Weather

 common newt

not sure! 

 female linnet

 common lizard

 light-brown apple moth

 skylark

 silver studded blue

 toadlet

yellowhammer

It's been such foul weather, I've not been able to get out much. But this evening was fine so I went with my teenager for a walk on Prees Heath and saw all these wonderful things. Hoping to look for voles and snakes tomorrow.

Above, Edgeley Road voles.

Below, a vole from the timber yard, and  a latrine a few yards upstream at White Lion Meadow car park.

I'm still not seeing any adults down in the field, but there must be some about because otherwise where would the juveniles come from?

Meanwhile in the middle of town it's hard to see the banks because the vegetation's grown so much. I did glimpse this fine fat adult swimming about behind Tesco's, though.

A Very Special Sighting

From a walk on Prees Heath. I've glimpsed lizards there before, but never seen four basking together and so happy to have their photograph taken.

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