Mossfields, Edward German Drive, and Twitter Friends

 You'll have to click to enlarge the photo - he wasn't stopping!

 Evidence of feeding at Edward German Drive

 Above: droppings and feeding at Edgeley Road.

Below: at Edward German Drive.

 My Twitter friend Pooks, who I met for the first time in real life and by accident!

You meet some really nice people when you're into wildlife, and the chap above is one of them. He'd been passing on water vole sightings to me via Twitter for a while. But I had no idea who he was when I approached him on the bridge by the main town car park and asked him if he'd spotted any interesting wildlife in the stream. 'There are supposed to be water voles here,' he said. I told him he was right, and pointed out a burrow. At which point he turned to me and said: 'Hang on, are you on Twitter?' I said, 'Yes, I'm @volewriter!' And then we knew who we were.

After a good chat he went off towards the wood yard to see if there was any vole activity there, and I went in the opposite direction, looking for field signs that would tell me how the colony was doing further along the brook. But fifteen minutes later he came hurrying up to me to show me some lovely photos he'd got of a water vole behind Tesco's.

Later in the day I went to check on Mossfields (the back of Saddler's Walk), and the voles there look to be doing really well.

Whixall and Greenfields

In the Country Park (Greenfields Nature Reserve). The ripples half way up the stream are probably caused by a water vole.

Water vole droppings in the Country Park

Above, an Edgeley Road vole. Below, one at White Lion Meadow.

Water vole droppings on Whixall Moss.

Whitethroat

Common red damselflies

Raft spider

Out at Yockings Gate

 The brook as it passes through Yockings Gate, coming down from Blakemere. 

Lots of vegetation to hide in and eat means happy voles!

Water vole droppings at the timber yard

 Feeding at the timber yard

Edgeley Road vole

I haven't had a clear sighting of a vole at Yockings Gate, but when I was up there last something was hunkered down in the vegetation, chewing a stalk of reed noisily and in a way that made the stalk fall like a tree being felled. That's water vole, for sure.

Similarly, it's been a few weeks since I had a sighting at the timber yard or White Lion Meadow, but there's vole-feeding and -poo about, so I know they're there!

Field Signs - a Round Up

 Burrow

 Single starry pawprint

Above and below, latrines

 Lots of water vole footprints.

Shy Vole

 Shy vole, damselfly (newly-hatched?), and robin-on-the-cusp.

Baby Slow Worm

Slow worm blending beautifully with its surroundings.

 Raft spider: the UK's biggest species of spider.

It was brilliant to get out on a proper, planned survey day with other vole enthusiasts and do some habitat assessment. We looked at a long ditch on Whixall Moss, and found one end full of water vole signs and the other full of field vole. The records were collected and will be stored and shared by the Wildlife Trust, Natural England, and other environmental groups.

Well, this is nice!