Friday 15 October 2010

Water voles 2010 - Review #2

To the west of the river is the Ock meadow, around the circumference runs sandford brook and through the middle of it runs an inconspicuous ditch, which may or may not have stagnant water depending upon the weather:
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In 2009, both the ditch and the brook had interesting signs of life:
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View Water Voles in the River Ock - Abingdon, 2009 in a larger map

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The yellow pins indicate potential signs of feeding (discussed here: http://viewsoftheock.blogspot.com/2009/04/ditch-life.html). Whilst the purple pin at the north east of the map is where a water vole was inhabiting the ditch and was recorded on film in May last year: http://viewsoftheock.blogspot.com/2009/05/water-vole-motion-picture.html.
Unfortunately 2010 has not been so productive with respect to the ditch and Sandford Brook - this years map shows no signs of life in the ditch, despite studying it several times:
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View Water voles 2010 in a larger map
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The yellow pin indicates what could have been water vole burrows, but the recent post below shows no obvious signs of life.
As for the now deserted ditch, it could have been a water vole just passing through, a colony could have become extinct, or there could still be water voles there and have just been unlucky this year

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