First Water Vole of 2018!

 A White Lion Meadow water vole. 

Below, pictures of the great crested newts that live on the brownfield site at Mile Bank Road, which is about to be built on.

Always nice to see the first vole of a new year: this one was at White Lion Meadow car park, which is usually the first colony to show.

In other news, the clearing of the old dairy factory at Mile Bank Road is about to start, and I was able by chance to speak today to someone from the developers. She told me that the team were all very clear about protecting the newts on the site, and that a lot of the vegetation-removal work was going to be done with hand tools, that they were leaving the bat roosts, that three ponds would be created in the housing development plus habitat improvement work of the banks, and a wild area leaving. Here are some images of the project on the Ainscough Strategic Land Projects website. Nothing about the detail she told me, unfortunately, but perhaps it's on the Shropshire Council Planning page.

Moths, Voles and Amphibians

Edgeley Road vole

Burnished Brass moth

Shaded Broad-bar

Large Magpie

Above, juvenile Common Newts and below, Great Crested newts.

Common Toad.

Why is a Vole like a Squid?

 The cloud of sediment that sometimes tells you you've just missed a water vole.

 Comma

 Common Blue

 Small Copper

 Red Admiral

 Skipper

 Juvenile common newts, found under an abandoned suitcase on a brownfield site (Mile Bank)

 Large White

 Holly Blue

 Chocolate Tip

 Privet Hawk moth

 Ragged Robin

 Grass snake

OK, water voles don't produce their own ink cloud, but they do rely on a cloud of sediment they kick up to escape from predators.

Now Summer's Really Here

 water vole latrine

speckled wood

yellowhammer

young toads

a great crested newt

huge common toad

privet hawk moth

juvenile water vole again (note the large feet)

End of Season Round-up, Part 1

Droppings at Broughall

 Edgeley Road vole

 Three sets of droppings from Edgeley Road

 Feeding and droppings at Mossfields (Saddler's Walk).

Latrine under the bridge by the car park at White Lion Meadow (near Tesco)

Sightings are hard to come by now, as the population disperses, but the field signs show a presence on many sites. The colony at Mossfields (Saddler's Walk) seems steady - this will need a special eye keeping on it when the land is developed for houses. Broughall is busy with voles and I'm not surprised as the habitat there is excellent. And though numbers are a little lower than last year, the voles at Edgeley Road seem fine too. As usual there is activity in the ditch at White Lion Meadow.

New sites logged this year include Ash Grange, Mile Bank and the Llangollen canal between Ellesmere and Whittington. In addition, it's been good to get a sighting at Yocking's Gate after a long absence of records.

On the down side, the voles seem to have gone from the Prees Branch canal; I can only assume mink predation's the problem there. A great shame as it was an excellent, strong colony. Similarly the ditch by Grocontinental has suffered disruption by building work this year and at least some of the habitat there has been deserted. I hope they return in 2015.

The Dairy Voles at Mile Bank, and the Importance of Brownfield Sites

 The wetland area by the old dairy at Mile Bank

 Water vole droppings in this area

 Great Crested Newts

 Toad

 Smooth Newt

 Four photos showing rubbish under which the Great Crested Newts were hiding.

 Baby smooth newts

This site at Mile Bank is up for a big housing development, so the builders had better be extremely careful to stay within the law. Not only are there Great Crested Newts on site, but water voles as well, both of them fully protected species. It is a terrific wetland area so I presume the developers as part of their mitigation measures will be creating replacement habitat elsewhere, or preserving these marshy sections and incorporating them into the new estate.