Thursday 23 January 2014

Voles at the Feeding Station

Hi All,
I've been unable to post so this should be in the comments, but I'm posting like this to confirm my re-invitation. Thanks Bruce.

I'm pretty sure Basil and his mate(s) are Short-tailed Field Voles, which is new to me as I've only seen Bank Voles at feeding stations before.

Bank Voles have more prominent ears, a slightly longer (though still shortish) tail and very noticeably in good light, a chestnut brown coat.

These you are feeding are quite grey-brown (Linda the Mammal Recorder pointed this out ) and their ears are hardly visible.
Also in the first photos about three days ago you can see they have very short tails.

Field mice (of various species I haven't memorised) always have long tails, longer than their bodies, pointed faces (not rounded) and large almost hairless ears. They also have big protruding eyes.

It would be nice to have Dormice back in Calderdale after a century or so. They need big areas of Hazel with Honeysuckle apparently.

1 comment:

Andy Kiz said...

Interesting, may be worth setting a mammal trap so we can investigate further?