Clethrionomys glareolus
Voles have short legs and very short tails. They are built more compactly than true mice and move more slowly and ploddingly; most of the species walk or run but rarely jump. Their footprints resemble those of martens. The footprints are found next to one another, the hind prints overlapping the front. Occasionally you might see the track of the short tail.
Their scat is usually smooth and round.
The Northern Red-backed Vole has large eyes and is not particularly shy. SS.
The Bank Vole has a greyish brown back; the undersides are greyish white. It is heavy for a vole and weighs 11–30 g and is 8–12.5 cm long; the tail measures 3.5–7 cm, so usually about half the body length. Despite its weight it is relatively slim, has large eyes and a tail that is longer than that of Common Vole, sometimes up to two-thirds of the body length.
Bank Voles prefer deciduous or mixed woodland with thick ground cover and piles of brushwood, but they also live in conifer forest with clearings and damper areas. They can also be found in underbrush and hedgerows as well as in swamps with reeds and alders; they can also occur in older gardens with brushwood and plenty of trees and bushes. They avoid open fields.
Bank Voles are active day and night and not particularly shy. They dig fairly shallow tunnels, but can also be found under cliffs and boulders, clumps of grass, fallen tree trunks, and under tree roots. Their spherical nests are 10–15 cm in diameter and made of grass, leaves, moss, bark fibres, etc. These nests are used not only during breeding season, but also as feeding sites and for food storage. In autumn, Bank Voles may look for buildings to winter in.
The entrance to a Bank Vole’s nest.
The front footprints are about 11 mm wide and 13 mm long, the hind prints 15 mm wide and 17 mm long. The Bank Vole usually moves in short jumps; consequently the hind prints are imprinted on top of the front.
The track ends in a hole in the ground, in snow, or in a tree or bush. Bank Voles feed on green plants, berries, buds, shoots, bark, and seeds. In northern Scandinavia they eat mushrooms and lichens, mostly boletes and beard lichens. You can see the marks of their front teeth on a mushroom cap, and these are about 1.5–2 mm wide. Bank Voles feed on cones in the same fashion as Yellow-necked and Wood Mice, and on nuts and cherry and plum stones in the same way as Striped Field Mice (cf. p. 201).
Cherry stones with the tooth marks of Bank Vole. LG.
Bank Voles like rose hips and apples, consuming the fruit’s flesh but not the seeds.
In autumn they gather supplies of grain, nuts, acorns, beechnuts, cherry stones, etc. and place these in holes in the ground, hollow trees, and nest boxes. When a Bank Vole fails to find its stored food, or is killed before it can use them, the seeds may sprout. Hoards of beechnuts that sprout in this fashion have come to be known as ‘mouse-beeches’, in other words, beeches that grow tightly bunched.
Bank Voles are agile climbers and chew on the bark of young conifers, deciduous trees, and bushes, and may completely chew off elderberry branches. This will happen especially in years with large vole populations.
Bank Voles do not feed on the lower part of a trunk, but higher up in the tree. They start at a branch fork and go along the branch removing bark. Under the gnawed trees you will find small pieces of gnawed-off bark: these are the external layers of thick bark, removed so the voles can get to the inner, more succulent part of the tree. The bark may show groove-shaped tooth marks 1.5–2 mm wide.