Canal Edging - what's Good and Bad for Voles

 Male beautiful demoiselle

Back at The Narrowboat pub today to take another look at those canal banks. The sections with steel shuttering/palings up against the soil are useless for water voles because you can't make burrows in metal. But I'm pleased to say there are stretches of the canal where, although the banks have been reinforced, it's with a waterproof fabric and wood, around which the voles can work. The photos show how they've swum underneath the wooden railing and made themselves little shelters between the wood and grass.

Another way of helping water voles to at least travel along sections of shuttered or concrete canal in safety is to install coir rolls along the bank sides, as the wildlife trust have done here:  http://www.wandletrust.org/?p=838

Beyond Ellesmere

 Burrows along the tow path

 Droppings and trackways

 A feeding station

 Near Maestermyn Marine 

The one-eyed vole and her baby, at Edgeley Road

After a report from a friend on Twitter - hooray for social media and wildlife networking - I took a trip out along the Ellesemere-Whittington road and checked out the Llangollen Canal there. On each side of the bridge were lots of burrows, and unusually they were on the tow path bank, right where people were walking. I didn't have time to sit and watch for actual voles, but I wonder how habituated to human presence this colony is.