Anxious Year Ahead

One of the frogs in my pond gearing up to breed.

Water vole footprints on the Edgeley Road side of the field near Grocontinental

Latrine from the same ditch

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This should be a happy time - first proper field signs appearing, and spring getting ready to unfurl. But this year will be the one where the council decides whether to re-designate two wildlife-important fields from their current 'green space' status to 'for development'. It shouldn't even be a consideration.

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Because not only does this have catastrophic implications for the water voles, it's extremely serious for the people of the town, too.

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Currently this very marshy land soaks up water like a giant sponge. It's a natural storage or holding tank for the surrounding area. However, if these fields were to be drained and concreted over, and additional water from new household or industrial use added to our natural, often torrential levels of rainfall, the likelihood of many Whitchurch homes flooding looks like a cert.

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And anyway, what developer would want to go to all the expense and time of getting in ecological experts to assess the land, trap all the voles, keep the voles safe while the houses are built, have ecological experts guide the developer to reinstate the water course to a standard where it was suitable for the voles to return? Which of course would have to be done by law.

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I absolutely can't imagine a less suitable place for building. So you have to hope commonsense prevails here!

Reading the banks

Field off Edgeley Road, location of burrow/slipway photos below.

Erosion reveals this old burrow in horizontal cross section.

Slipways or trackways running into the water from burrows.

Occupied burrow

Droppings at the railway bridge by Homebase, but are they rat or w-v? Both animals tend to make use of this handy brick!
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Still a few weeks too early for real signs to emerge, I'd have thought, though a fortnight of days as warm as today would wake the water voles up I'm sure. But even in the absence of breeding latrines and ostentatious feeding stations it's not too hard to see where the w-vs have been active. There are occupied burrows, for instance, with nibbled grass round the outsides, and lots of slipways into the water. Have to say, though, these don't always come out so clearly in photographs; they're actually more obvious in the field.

Field Voles 2011

My wood mice gearing up for spring.

Field vole droppings - note tiny scale.

Field vole feeding station.

Prints: could be rat or water vole
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At last a break in the rain, so I took a quick peep at White Lion Meadow and the field near Grocontintental. Everywhere's looking pretty sorry for itself: WLM is full of litter and the water level's quite high, but there were these prints just under the bridge and a rat/water-vole size run. Are they rat or vole? I can't decide, but worth keeping an eye on as this is where I saw a w-v nesting last spring.
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As for the ditch by Grocontinental there are some likely-looking burrows but nothing obviously w-v as yet. There were field vole latrines and feeding, however, which I post for comparison - f-v signs are a much smallerscale than w-v. (Think N gauge rather than OO, model railway enthusiasts.)

New Season

One of Terry Whittaker's fantastic videos to keep us going till the spring.

Matted reeds forming a protective carpet

Bank full of water vole burrows

Grazing round a burrow entrance

Typical vole-cut leaf
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Took a look at my nearest colony today not expecting to see much - ground too hard for footprints, there won't be latrines yet - but actually there was a fair bit of feeding and the burrows are obviously active, open and clear, often with grazing round the entrances. Surrounding the stream is a wide area of matted reed, perfect for hiding voles of all species, and I only had to part a few random stems to find whole networks of runs. It's a critical element of the site for these voles as the stream's so shallow there are no banks to speak of.

Merry Christmas from a busy bird feeder

Voles will be back in the spring, we hope.

Cold Autumn Skies

Nuthatch

Great Tit

Blue Tit

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And a busy busy bird feeder. As well as the above we get long tailed tits, jackdaws, greater spotted woodpeckers, rooks, collared doves, wood pigeons, wrens, stacks of house sparrows and starlings, dunnocks, greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, siskins, pied and grey wagtails, blackbirds, fieldfares, robins and sparrowhawks. While obviously none of these is rare, numbers of certain species (eg sparrows) are down and need all the help they can get.

The Importance of Log Piles

Everything but the bird feeder seems to have quietened down with the cold weather. However, a gentle poke around our very modest garden log pile turned up this frog, hunkering down for winter (you can be sure I covered him up again). The logs were packed with invertebrates, too. Lots of amphibians shelter underneath planters and in stone walls/brick piles. It's best not to be too tidy if you like your wildlife.