End of Season Round-up, Part 1

Droppings at Broughall

 Edgeley Road vole

 Three sets of droppings from Edgeley Road

 Feeding and droppings at Mossfields (Saddler's Walk).

Latrine under the bridge by the car park at White Lion Meadow (near Tesco)

Sightings are hard to come by now, as the population disperses, but the field signs show a presence on many sites. The colony at Mossfields (Saddler's Walk) seems steady - this will need a special eye keeping on it when the land is developed for houses. Broughall is busy with voles and I'm not surprised as the habitat there is excellent. And though numbers are a little lower than last year, the voles at Edgeley Road seem fine too. As usual there is activity in the ditch at White Lion Meadow.

New sites logged this year include Ash Grange, Mile Bank and the Llangollen canal between Ellesmere and Whittington. In addition, it's been good to get a sighting at Yocking's Gate after a long absence of records.

On the down side, the voles seem to have gone from the Prees Branch canal; I can only assume mink predation's the problem there. A great shame as it was an excellent, strong colony. Similarly the ditch by Grocontinental has suffered disruption by building work this year and at least some of the habitat there has been deserted. I hope they return in 2015.

Round-up

Photos above showing the lovely rounded shape of a vole.

Feeding station and droppings at Mossfields.

Vole which had been damaged, probably by fighting. It looked healthy otherwise and was eating well and swimming about, but I haven't seen it for a fortnight. It's either died or found another territory.

Had a look at a few sites now we're coming towards the end of the season. Obviously the field off Edgeley Road's been the hottest spot for water voles in Whitchurch, but it looks as if White Lion Meadow's also done OK as the stone under the bridge has had a latrine on it all summer. I looked further up Edward German Drive but couldn't see anything; then again, the vegetation's too thick to get right down the bank so I may have missed some signs.

Mossfields (the back of Saddler's Walk), amazingly, hasn't dried out despite the hot weather, and the voles there seem to be doing well if the amount of feeding is anything to go by.

Greenfields Nature reserve is a mystery. Again, the vegetation there is so thick I can't get down to the water to see what's going on. Crossing my fingers that colony's held up this year, and that the few voles left at the Prees Branch Canal manage to re-establish themselves next summer.

The Grocontinental voles look to have recovered well; I had a sighting there yesterday.

I need still to check on Black Park Road and the Railway Bridge by Homebase, and will do within the next week or so.

Prees Branch and Grocontinental

Baby frog, well camouflaged, near Boodles Bridge on the Prees Branch Canal.

Below, various latrines on the ditch by Grocontinental. 

Edgeley Road vole

Had a report of a sighting on the Prees Branch Canal nature reserve, so I went to check. Pretty much all vole signs disappeared from this stretch last year and we're not sure why. (I suspect mink, myself.) So today I had a good look round the banks near the bridge, but wasn't able to find anything other than a possible burrow and a tiny bit of feeding.

However, I've been in this situation before: drawn a blank on field signs, and then spotted an actual vole just as I was about to give up. The lady who sent the report in knows what she's talking about so I have no doubt there's some vole activity there. Just not the numbers we had previously. I hope the colony can build back up again this summer.

Meanwhile, in the ditch by Grocontinental, there are latrines, prints, feeding and burrows all the way along. We'll have to see how the year progresses.

When colonies crash

Young Edgeley Road vole swims past, spots me...

...and dives.

I've not been able to get down to the Prees Branch Canal reserve much this year, but when I did make it a couple of weeks ago I was dismayed to find no real evidence of water voles at all. This had been a strong colony for years, despite some mink scares along the way. But when the rest of the Whitchurch Water Vole Group went down to check, they were able to find only scant signs of a much-reduced population.

It does happen. White Lion Meadow was stuffed with water voles in 2006, and yet now the numbers are much reduced. The voles who live under the railway bridge at Homebase disappeared over the summer a couple of years ago, but came back the following spring and we never knew why. And of course last July the Greenfields/ Whitchurch County Park site was cleared out by mink, only this year it's recovered well and there seem to be more voles down there than ever.

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Water vole colonies are fragile and need monitoring and occasional intervention (eg reporting pollution to the Environment Agency). If the problem is resolved and there are water voles living nearby, vacated areas can fill up again fairly quickly.

We don't know what's caused the crash at the Prees Branch Canal - my guess is mink - but I do hope next year there's better news.

Feeding Signs

The Staggsbrook as it passes under Greenfields Rise - teeming with water voles.

Feeding stations on the Prees Branch Canal

Prees Branch Canal.

Feeding station at Black Park Road.

Vole-cut reed at Black Park Road.

Feeding at White Lion Meadow - note the V and arrow-shaped ends of the nibbled stalks.

Water vole feeding at White Lion Meadow.

I think this is the remains of a frog eaten by an otter! Under the concrete bridge at Whitchurch Country Park
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Seems like a good time to post a few pictures of what to look for when assessing whether water voles have been feeding in a given area. Sometimes, as well as the signs shown above, grass will have been grazed short around burrows. But it's the slanted ends of stalks that are the giveaway every time: geese and ducks will chop up vegetation and leave it floating in the water or scattered on the bank, but not neatly the way water voles do with that 45 degree cut.

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Had a brief sighting tonight off the bridge at Greenfields Rise (top pic). This is an area just outside the Country Park, and depressingly, one being talked about for development by the Waterways Trust. It's stuffed with burrows and looks like a really busy, key stretch for water voles. The habitat's perfect. No improvements needed!

Prees Branch Canal 2010

Feeding station at the Prees Branch Canal

The plastic mesh baskets holding sodden oasis that keeps the clay moist and ready to take paw prints

Tracking cartridges covered in cling film and soaking in water to keep them fresh
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I should have renewed the tracking pads on the mink rafts before, but I finally made it down to the Prees Branch Canal nature reserve and refreshed the inserts with new smooth clay. On one raft was water vole feeding, and on the other, water vole droppings, and there was feeding all the way between. It looks as though that colony's off to a sound start.

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All the photographs of voles are taken at White Lion Meadow car park.

Summary of 2009

The vole-watching season's pretty much over, so this blog will be doing what the water voles do, which is to go into semi-hibernation till the spring (not true hibernation, but a kind of torpor with only occasional appearances above ground!).

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So has it been a good year for water voles in and around Whitchurch? Well, there've been gains and losses, as some colonies began well and then seemed to fall away, and others started hesitantly and became very strong. The most active have been in the fields near me, the ditches near Grocontinental which have afforded me lots of sightings and photographs. White Lion Meadow's been quiet, but perhaps not as quiet as sightings would suggest, in that I've spent a lot less time watching there because there wasn't so much obvious activity - a vicious and unscientific circle. I'm still not sure whether the sightings across the car park at Lidl were field/bank vole.

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Edward German Drive has been steady: no actual sightings, but a lot of clear field signs. The back of Wayland Road is hard to access, but there were certainly water voles there mid-summer.

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Moving further up, the section by the railway bridge near Homebase suffered some kind of crash: last year there was a very strong colony there, and there were plenty of field signs in spring 2009. But when I surveyed late summer, there was nothing at all round the bridge, only at the end near the field. I have no explanation for that, but it goes to show how what looks like a completely established group can easily be wiped out. However, they do beed quickly, and colonies naturally shift and expand and contract, so as long as there are voles on reither side, that section should be repopulated again as the habitat's excellent.

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Albert and I both found lots of vole activity at Black Park Road, but I couldn't see anything at Yockings Gate. There was some vicious dredging there, so I think it'll need anopther year before the banks are suitable again. And I haven't followed the Staggs Brook further up as it's private land. The golf course now seems to have lost all its water voles (and there were so many a few years back! I suspect mink as we've had reports from round there) but there've been vole sightings in ditches close by.

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On the other side of town the various colonies at the Country Park have been consistent, and moving out of Whitchurch, we've continued to see field signs at Steel Heath, the Prees Branch Canal between Waterloo and Whixall Marina, and in Whixall generally. I haven't spent much time oneither Brown Moss or Whixall Moss this year, so I don't know how the voles are doing there.

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Anyway, all we can do is hope enough make it through the winter to get cracking next year. I'll be out with my camera the first warm day in February!

White Lion Meadow - a photo at last

Not a brilliant picture, I grant you, but the first one since May. There was so much nibbled watercress under the bridge, I thought I had a chance of seeing a water vole if I stood there long enough.
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Added later - went to check the Prees Branch Canal this evening and found plenty of water vole evidence, including a feeding station made of chewed horsetail. I know w-vs eat over 200 species of plants, but I've never seen them chop up horsetail before. There were about four little piles of it, so the vole must have been keen. On the drive back I stopped near Dobson's Bridge ( http://staggsbrook.blogspot.com/2008/08/voles-where-ive-not-seen-them-before.html ) and saw another water vole swimming in the brook there.