This evening, Nicole was sitting by our pond having a cuppa while I was teaching guitar. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement. Was it a mouse? Too big. Was it a rat? No, it went for a swim underwater. It was a water vole. And not only one, there were lots.
Quickly, she ran upstairs and got her camera. Then quietly, she returned to the pond and waited. She had only counted to 60 when a little head appeared at the entrance to their burrow. And soon they were scampering about, eating, swimming and doing water voley things.
We are delighted to be able to provide a natural habitat for these wonderful creatures. A little research has told us these are in rapid decline all across the UK. Predation by mink is the main problem, but loss of habitat isn’t helping either.
We’ll be doing everything we can to help our water voles.
You’ve really helped us! We have a strange hole in our garden and we couldn’t work out what had made it. We put up a wildlife camera but it didn’t capture anything. As the hole is beside our stream we’re now sure it’s a water vole We are dead chuffed to have this little animal in our garden. Now we want a hedgehog. I’ve put a hedgehog house under our hedge but no resident yet. If you find a lonely hedgehog please ask Nicole to bring it round to us.
Yes, it is great having water voles. We haven’t seen ours for a while as the pond dried up for while. It’s full again now, but I would expect them to be hibernating even though it has been unseasonably warm. I haven’t seen a hedgehog since I moved here. I used to feed them at my last home, but here I have seen no signs of them here. I’m hoping our new woodland and the hedges we’ve planted might attract them.