Numbers Increasing

 Ideal habitat

I had four sightings yesterday, at least three voles. One of them was the one-eyed water vole I've been paying particular attention to, and it's amazing how well this animal copes, considering the impact there must be on its peripheral vision. I haven't spotted any young yet, though.

I include this photograph of butterflies I've just hatched. You send off a voucher and get five tiny painted lady caterpillars in a pot, complete with food. When they pupate, you transfer them to a netting hatchery, and then only when the adult insects emerge do you have to feed them (with sugar water or fruit). I'll be releasing mine tomorrow.

Brand New Colony!

Albert arranged with the farmer for us to look round the ponds at Grange Farm, Ash, and where the habitat was good we soon found water vole signs. Better than that, we actually had four sightings! It was great to meet these women from Shropshire Wildlife Trust too, and to share the vole-love.

Black Park Road and Yockings Gate

 The one-eyed vole of Edgeley Road, plus some more of her/his underwater droppings.

 The Staggs Brook as it passes Black Park Road on its way to Yockings Gate

 Typical feeding

 Burrow

 This shelf effect at the base of the bank has probably been created by water voles moving back and forth.

 Latrine

 Two feeding stations

Lots of water vole signs at Black Park Road and in the stretch leading down to the Railwayman's cottage (Debbie's voles). I presume they're also upstream, at Yockings Gate too, as the habitat there is excellent, but I can't get down to the banks to see. I have had sightings there in the past. So this spring looks good for the water voles of the Staggs Brook.

Underwater Latrines?

 Water vole with one eye

 Droppings laid into the water, and below, four pics of the more usual kind of sites for droppings

People who survey for water voles are well used to seeing latrines which have been submerged by flooding, but I've now seen two lots of droppings that I know have been deliberately deposited below the surface. It's not something I've witnessed before, and I wonder whether there's any significance to the behaviour.

In other news, I've been watching this one-eyed vole and pondering on the background there, too. Last year I saw a vole with a badly-cut eye ( http://staggsbrook.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/round-up.html ) and guessed it was because of autumn fighting over territory - I think wounds like this are common. So if the same is true for this one-eyed vole, then the animal may well have survived all winter, which is no mean feat when its peripheral vision is so affected. The vole seems entirely healthy otherwise, and is eating and swimming as normal.

Nesting

 Edgeley Road nesting vole

 Droppings from the ditch by Grocontinental

 Hedgehog poo 

Green Veined White

Just spent an hour watching a female water vole taking nesting materials to her nest. Water voles build football-sized woven grass nests usually in underground chambers, though they have been occasionally found above ground in clumps of vegetation, too. http://www.foxglovecovert.org.uk/images/blog/IMG_3754a.jpg

Debbie's Voles Again

 Burrows, vole-scaping and feeding at Railwayman's Cottage

 Common shrew

Garden tiger moth caterpillar I rescued from the water.

I went to check up on my friend Debbie's voles and found they're doing extremely well. It's a superb site where you can get really close, and the voles are very active. I saw one swimming just in front of me only half an hour ago. They've really shaped the banks with their trails, trackways, runs and chutes, too.