White Lion Meadow mystery

Possible water vole prints under the bridge. But are they rat?.

I feel if there was even one water vole by the car park stretch of the brook, someone would have seen it by now. But this morning I found a definite burrow with nibbled grass round the outside, the blades cut off in that tell-tale slanted way. The burrow's much too big to be field vole, certainly too small to be rat. It's also right by where I saw, a week or so ago, some grass being tugged from underneath, which again is a characteristic water vole behaviour. So I think all we can do is keep our eyes open.

Better Frogs

Spawning Time from John Harding on Vimeo.

Here's John Harding's lovely video of my garden pond. Turn the volume up to hear the male frogs croaking!

Greenfields Rise

Took a stroll down Greenfields, the stretch just outside Whitchurch Country Park, and found these. Worryingly, this is a stretch of brook which is being talked about for development. I can only hope that if anything of that nature did take place, extremely strict mitigation measures would be applied (legally they'd have to be because water voles are so heavily protected now).

Size

These photos, for all they're technically flawed, go some way to showing the distinctive shape of a water vole - the rounded ends, the small, neat ears - and the size - that's a litre bottle in the background of the second shot.

Same time, same place

Going on Dave's tip yesterday, I took myself down to the timber yard and almost straight away saw this water vole. It looked like a pregnant female to me, but that might just be wishful thinking on my part.

First Definite Sighting of 2009!

My friend Dave sent me this, taken at 3pm today. I am SO happy the voles are back!

Endless latrines, but nothing at White Lion Meadow

A water vole dropping against a 1p piece, for scale

Refreshed latrine outside the timber yard

Latrine on the Prees Branch Canal

Latrine under the bridge on Greenfields Rise, outside the Country Park

Droppings under the bridge near Homebase

I've come to the conclusion there are no water voles at present in the car park stretch of White Lion Meadow. This isn't especially significant: colonies do move about, up and down waterways, and if there's a breeding female outside the timber yard as the refreshed latrine suggests, then I'm sure there'll be voles back under the swimming pool stretch before too long (not least because they can't extend in the other direction due to a massive culvert).

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Meanwhile there's clearly activity elsewhere, despite the lack of sightings.