Page 24 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #06

he last time I went looking for water voles Above: Glasgow’s familiarity, nostalgia even – why, it’s Ratty! Then another
with wildlife photographer Laurie Campbell, glossy black one, chocolate-brown this time, scuttles out – quivering,
water voles are
we were high on a moor in Scotland’s dashing around like a small guinea pig in a hurry – and
among Britain’s
Monadhliath Mountains. The silence was most striking disappears again.
so intense I could hear the sound of my mammals. Below: As I tune in, I see more and more burrows, and water
pen as I scribbled notes. Crouching beside the mole-like voles popping up like jack-in-the-boxes. Right here, in
rodents pop up
Ta ditch, Laurie pointed out the neat ‘lawns’ an otherwise normal inner-city park, against a backdrop
from complex
at the water’s edge where the grass had been nibbled short of grey tower blocks, with kids cycling, mothers pushing
burrow systems.
by water voles. I heard a sudden, soft ‘plop’, saw a twitch in Inset: ecologists buggies and dog walkers strolling by. It feels incongruous,
the tussocky grass… but nothing more. use flags to mark verging on surreal. For a start, there’s no water! Surely
Today we’re on the edge of the M8 motorway, which the burrows. ‘Ratty’ should be messing about on a riverbank? Every field
slices through the centre of Glasgow, relentless traffic guide worth its salt tells us to look for water voles beside
thundering by. We’re just below a retail park and along slow-moving rivers, canals, streams or marshy pools.
the steep earth slope, among discarded coffee-cup lids
and sandwich wrappers, are small, round holes: water ADAPTABLE RODENTS
vole burrows. We’re here with zoologist Robyn Stewart, In the UK Arvicola amphibius is normally ‘riparian’ – living
researcher for the Glasgow Water Vole Project, who is beside water – but across the species’ broad range from
giving us a tour of her unlikely beat. Spain to Siberia many of its populations are ‘fossorial’
– non-aquatic, living in grassland and burrowing like
LOOKING OUT OF PLACE moles. Sometimes these fossorial water voles occur
It just so happens that the East End of Glasgow, including in large numbers and are considered a pest of
a few kilometres of motorway corridor, city parks and farmland and gardens. So our ‘watery water
housing estates, hosts the highest density of water voles voles’ represent just one lifestyle option for
anywhere in the UK. You could hardly conceive of a less these adaptable rodents. What is unusual in
promising place to find a species that’s not only one of Glasgow is the voles’ high population density
our fastest declining mammals, but also popularly and their proximity to urban life.
associated with idyllic, languid backwaters. Robyn leads us closer, carefully sticking to
We continue to a nearby park, and settle, a path around the edge of the slope, which is
binoculars poised, beside a gentle slope. honeycombed with burrows. It reminds me of
Within a few minutes a black face appears walking near puffin colonies on the Isle of May
at a burrow entrance. My first water or Farne Islands, where straying from the path
vole sighting comes with a start of could risk collapsing a burrow underfoot.
24 BBC Wildlife June 2018