Beyond Ellesmere

 Burrows along the tow path

 Droppings and trackways

 A feeding station

 Near Maestermyn Marine 

The one-eyed vole and her baby, at Edgeley Road

After a report from a friend on Twitter - hooray for social media and wildlife networking - I took a trip out along the Ellesemere-Whittington road and checked out the Llangollen Canal there. On each side of the bridge were lots of burrows, and unusually they were on the tow path bank, right where people were walking. I didn't have time to sit and watch for actual voles, but I wonder how habituated to human presence this colony is.

Rats and Voles - Essentially, it's Down to Bluntness

I hope these comparison shots are helpful for looking at the differences between rats and water voles. A similar size, but the muzzle of a rat is much pointier, and the ears more prominent. At the other end of the animal, the tail of a rat is pink and scaly where a water vole's is brown and furred.

Baby Water Voles at Play

Pleased with this video footage of what are almost certainly siblings messing about and play-fighting. The shot of the juvenile part-submerged shows how the water-repellent fur traps a layer of air, turning the vole silvery while it's below the surface. But a good shake when the animal climbs out and the coat is pretty much dry again. Grooming plays a big part in keeping fur waterproof.

Time to review Water Vole Buffer Zones?

 Baby voles

 Latrine on grass

Vole-feeding

I was surprised to find a large feeding station 80 metres from the stream, almost over the other side of the field. That is far, far above the 5-10m buffer zone required by planning regulations, and even more than the 15-20m suggested by wildlife trusts to protect habitat from building development work. I'm fairly sure the photo above does show water vole feeding and not field vole, given the scale and thickness of the plant stems. Time to review the regs?

A nice sighting at the main town car park this lunchtime; that colony keeps on going!

Three Vole Videos

It's the one-eyed vole and (I think) one of her offspring. Turn up the speakers to hear the squeaks.

The Dairy Voles at Mile Bank, and the Importance of Brownfield Sites

 The wetland area by the old dairy at Mile Bank

 Water vole droppings in this area

 Great Crested Newts

 Toad

 Smooth Newt

 Four photos showing rubbish under which the Great Crested Newts were hiding.

 Baby smooth newts

This site at Mile Bank is up for a big housing development, so the builders had better be extremely careful to stay within the law. Not only are there Great Crested Newts on site, but water voles as well, both of them fully protected species. It is a terrific wetland area so I presume the developers as part of their mitigation measures will be creating replacement habitat elsewhere, or preserving these marshy sections and incorporating them into the new estate.

Milk and Plain Chocolate

It doesn't often come out in my photos, I don't think, but there's a real difference between baby water voles just out of the nest, and older juveniles/adults. Babies are really quite a dark brown - 70% cocoa solids, I'd say, if you're using chocolate as an indicator. That's how you distinguish them from field voles and bank voles. But older animals are paler-coated, more like a mix of milk and plain chocolate. The photos above show four different young voles, which is reassuring after the heavy rain which can drown new and inexperienced swimmers.