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Some good news for Water Voles

I love these people,now the increasing Otter population has killed and displaced all the mink we feel its safe to reintroduce the water vole.Yummy water vole snacks for an apex predator. Seven hundred voles cost nearly a half a million pounds from lottery funds, what a bargain. Oh but Otters have larger heads so will not be able to get into the burrow like a mink,as if that's going to stop them.I love Water voles but you need to remove all predators that can hunt in the water to give them a chance.
 
Certainly good to see more water voles Joe,.. but the whole piece seemed to be a justification for ,.. I quote,... " burgeoning otter population"
Sounds like a bit of otter spin to me.
I see otters down the bottom of my garden on a regular basis, .. but I have mink nesting under an old tree trunk on the bank just as they did last year.
No voles though!:)
 
Do otters kill mink? Any proof of that? I know for sure that the sightings of mink on the Teme declined proportionately to the increased sightings of otters... but I just presumed that the mink (and polecat/ferret cross-breed thingies) just moved to where the otters weren't in residence. Not seen a water vole for many a year.
 
Not entirely convinced with the otter- mink thing, but when you fish a certain river venue for years and years you tend to notice wildlife changes.
One such water for me was the Mole close to where I spent most of my life.
It was odds on that you were bound to see a stoat after rabbits on the far bank until the mink arrived in the late eighties.
I remember watching a mink swim down the far bank then disappear around the foot of a long dead 30foot hollow alder only to appear sticking its head out of an old woodpecker hole 20 feet off the deck!
Made me realise that only a bird in flight is safe from the critters.
 
Not meaning to hijack the thread but there were some small black rodents, shiny fur, about threes inches long running around in the reeds I was sitting in and even over my shoes when I was fishing the upper on Friday. I did think they might be water voles but probably too small?
 
Dave Quinn said:
Not meaning to hijack the thread but there were some small black rodents, shiny fur, about threes inches long running around in the reeds I was sitting in and even over my shoes when I was fishing the upper on Friday. I did think they might be water voles but probably too small?
Click to expand...

Sounds like gerbils Dave :eek:
 
Dave Quinn said:
Not meaning to hijack the thread but there were some small black rodents, shiny fur, about threes inches long running around in the reeds I was sitting in and even over my shoes when I was fishing the upper on Friday. I did think they might be water voles but probably too small?
Click to expand...

Shrews ?
 
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