I have always admired some of the other Abingdon Blogs.
Take Views of the Ock. When that blog started, the blogger was elated after weeks of searching to get an indistinct blurred image of a water vole (I think they are also called water rats). Images got better and better until now the blogger seems able to find them at will, and has gone on to find other creatures like otters.
Today I saw my first water vole in the Margaret Brown Gardens, then almost immediately I saw five others. They scurried away, one down the riverside, the other five under the lavender.You can just see one cautiously peeping out to see if it is safe yet.
He / she then came out a bit further…
Then finally came into full view. My first clear image of a water vole (or is it a rat?). Just to add “Many people, including pest controllers, builders and developers, mistake the endangered water vole for the brown rat and accidentally poison them”
From what I have looked up, the clue is in the tail. In the brown rat it is hairless and the vole hairy. The trouble in the breeding season is that maybe you were seeing a young rat, so it might, superficially, look like a vole. Anyway, let’s see what others think.
Sorry Backstreeter, have to agree with patlon that this one’s a rat. Its fur colour is greyish whereas voles are brownish, voles’ ears are almost invisible unlike this specimen, and voles have a blunt muzzle not a pointed snout like our friend here. And, as patlon mentions, this one’s tail is rattish. But keep looking – it’d be great to know of voles in the vicinity.
“MMMmmm, you dirty rat!”,
Backstreeter, thank you very much for the link and I’m glad you like the blog. The next time I see you and Harry I’ll introduce myself.
I have to agree with the others, it is a brown rat. Water voles have shorter tails and a shorter nose, also their ears are less obvious.
Abingdon is hot spot for water voles, with populations on most of the water ways, so I’m sure if you continue to keep an eye out for them – they’re most active in the morning and evenings – then I’m sure you’ll see one.
This is definitely a rat. The ears are prominent, a water voles are close to the head. Good pic, though!