Hi Everyone
I am so excited I can hardly contain my joy. The very rare water voles are back on our pond after a 3 year absense.
When we moved to our smallholding nearly 9 years ago we allready had them on our pond. The pond was very overgrown and the water relitively shallow and in the summer it nearly dried up. But one day I noticed a water vole sitting on the back chewing some reeds it was a great site as they are so rare and I thought how lucky we were.
That year they bred and occaisionally we saw the young voles and they were so cute. i used to spend ages watching them it was great.
But after about 4 years the pond looked such a mess and got so overgrown I decided to tidy it up so I hired a digger & cleared the pond out and made it a bit bigger and deeper. I also got my big Sthil strimmer and set about strimming all the reeds and overgrown vegetation.
Of course what i didnt realise at the time was that I was destroying the water voles habitat. Some time afterwards I said to "she who must be obeyed" that I hadnt seen the voles for for quite a while. Only after seeing a program on TV about them did I realise my mistake.
So for the past 3 years I havnt touched the pond or vegetaion in the hope that one day the voles might return.
Well, imagine my joy tonight when I was walking round the pond and I heard a small splash, looked down and saw what appearded to be a water vole it swam accross the pond then sat on the bank for a few seconds looked at me then dissapeared into the reeds.I was delighted and ran indoors to tell Sharon. So I cant wait till tomorrow so I can see if I can spot it again
