Stoat Presence

 

I guessed it was a predator making the water voles nervous this year: I was sitting quietly last week when a stoat padded past. However, last night one vole did come out and show itself. There were at least two others moving around underwater or below the fringe of the grass.

Close Encounter with a Stoat

 Stoat stalking the water vole.

Below, lizards at Prees Heath

This water vole was almost a stoat's dinner last night. I watched it slinking along the stream while the vole sat eating, oblivious. The stoat was just starting to make its way up the bank when I let out a cough and it disappeared like lightning, closely followed by the vole. Stoats do predate water voles, but there are lots of rabbits nearby and well as field and bank voles and wood mice, so it wouldn't have gone hungry.

 Green Hairstreak butterfly.

Female and male wheatears.

 Not sure whose egg this is but it's very very tiny.

 White Lion Meadow vole.

Below, some field signs at Edward German Drive, the timber yard and White Lion Meadow.

I was very sad to see a dead water vole at the timber yard. Unusually it was floating in the water, which makes me think it's been killed by a cat and left. A vole which had been poisoned or just died of old age or wounds would go into its burrow. Please keep your cats in between dusk and dawn, and fit their collars with a flashing light like this one. They're very cheap and they make the cat a lot safer too. The number of times I've nearly run over a cat on the road in the dark!

Tons of voles, and a weasel

This water vole has an injury to its eye, but the cut is healing well and the vole seems fine.

This water vole is a young adult, in tip top condition.

  

Various latrines. Very often the presence of feasting slugs will indicate where there's trampled poo!

Four Spotted Chaser?

Green Hairstreak

Slow worm

Excitingly, lots of water vole latrines at Cuckoo Corner, Whixhall Moss.

I put a trail cam out to watch a burrow where activity had declined, and caught this weasel on film! So perhaps the voles have shifted up- or down-stream.

The lovely rounded bottom of a vole.

A climbing vole at White Lion Meadow! They are not built for acrobatics, and

 often fall off into the water.

An adult vole that seems to be blind in one eye. It could be another fighting injury.

Not a great photo, but the first one of a baby vole this year.