VOLES ARE FUN TO WATCH

Look closely....no pointed nose, furry ears very small often unseen naked tail, small rear feet and large shoulders, arms and hands for digging. This vole is an adult not much more than three times the size of the peanut it was capturing. One of the pix has this vole doing a flip flop. It heard the automatic focus beep in the camera. Most gardeners in the Northeast have these critters and often think they are mice.

My grandson took several dozen pix to get these three shots, his first interesting wildlife pictures. There will be three pix......as you know one at a time.

Second pix.

Camera shy. :)

Last pix.

I can't believe he got pictures! must be patient. A budding nature photographer? very fun.

Good teacher too! :)

Good pictures from your budding photographer! Obviously, they were very photogenic voles!

I'm sure a former Scout leader makes for an awesome Poppop/ Gramps/ Grampa/ (or whatever you go by.) for a boy. What do you go by? I used Gramps, but my step brothers kids were first so my kids use Poppop like their southern blood cousins.

I grew up on the Mason Dixon LIne where Poppop was common. Most of the time that is what I get.

I still go back to that first scout camp for an occasional Friday evening Order of The Arrow cerimony which my age group and our leaders originally designed or programed some sixty years ago. I no longer perform the Eagle Dance...let alone the Flaming Hoop Dance. My dance costumes are still being maintained by the Council Order of the Arrow. Younger feet now dance in my costumes. I am honored to have the opportunity and ability to help maintain the council fire ring physical arrangements. For that cerimony we built and have continously maintained the fire form the spirits of the North Mountain which travels by wire about an eighth of a mile to light the cermonial campfire. Others will soon have to step in because there are only three known living who started the tradition in that cerimonial ring. Most no longer know us when we do show up. Guess the Spirits of the North Woods have aged too. :)

Great picture...but it is a star nosed mole!!!Deb

Deb...........I need a link to a Star Nosed Mole that looks like the pictures we had classified as a vole by Fredrick Ziegler, Biology Phd, retired. The Star Nosed Moles I can find have a definate feature around the nose which my grandson's animal does not have. They also frequent an enviroment entirely different than where our little animal is living.

Nothing I would rather do than show him references and ask him to take another look at some more pix I did not show because they were all similar.

Ooops!! Got my glasses on...I checked pic again and saw what I thought was its nose is actually its foot!! LOL!!!...OK...Either a Blarina brevicauda (short-tailed shrew) or possibly...but not as likely...a Pinus pinetorum (Pine Vole).

Okay...asked hubby. PhD. Assoc. Professor Emeritis VPI&SU mammalogist. He agrees...shrew or maybe Pine Vole.
Here is a link for the shrew:
http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?stat=BROWSE&query_src=photos_fauna_sci-Mammal&where-lifeform=Mammal&where-taxon=Blarina+brevicauda&title_tag=Blarina+brevicauda

Here is one for the vole:
http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/pine-vole:microtus-subterraneus-photo-2974.html

The shrew is a very soft dark gray, the vole not as soft coated and a bit more brown. Since you saw it in person and not through a pic...please take a look at the two links and let us know :)
Debbie Cranford

Far as I can determine it's a vole. Most likely this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadow_vole

How big was it?

Are shrew's ears smaller than voles?

Groovy, caught the critters red-handed, doc!! Yes, it is fun to see all the hanky-panky in the garden. I wondered why Stormy wasn't here. LOL!!

You mentioned Scout several times...my son is a Webelo first year and he is learning camp skills and trees and stuff. His specialty is frogs and reptiles.

Foxy, my mother taught me to be silent when I have nothing nice to say!!

Doc, your grandson took some great photos.

Learn something every day! Here what I thought I had were voles are really shrews. I have seen some close up, they are the ones my cat liked to catch and then toss them up in the air and jump at them after they were dead. Now the cat is fat and lazy, could care less about Shrew catching. http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Blarina_brevicauda.html

Shrews in this part of the US have no visible external ears other than the entry into the the ear canal, except for the short-tailed shrew. The short-tailed shrew is about 3-4'' in length and dark gray in color. Meadow voles average from 6-7'' and are brown. Pine voles have small eyes and small ears that are mostly hidden by their fur which is reddish brown. The adult pine vole is about 3" long.

Things or subjects like this are a constant reminder of the fact I never left my schooling get in the road of my education.

Best I can tell now is what I often learned time and time again that education and success seldom relates to formal education. I now have at age seventy three desided that knowing one vole is not to know all voles. After literally hours of research on the web I find no pictures or written words that match up consistantly with the little guy my grandson photographed. One source indicated that there are twenty seven specifically different voles. That is without considering normal variance of size and collor of any single vole. We know that over population reduces the average size and weight in voles as well as all other animals without considering genetics and field crosses of the genetics. Now to my opinion which certainly is not the rule in this case.......My critter matches up with no picture I have yet found on the web. Most of the factors do still cause me to believe this is a vole.

Maybe we should get the agriculture department to float a huge grant to study the voles and how they support many higher critters in the food chain. I don't really see how we can manage to live a fully educated life without knowing....."the rest of the story". We sure do need better pictures. Note the grant should be of ample time to photograph and classify at least twenty seven voles and all the unknown little differences. The world will be a better place if we can retrain them to stop eating bark off our shrubs in hard times. A second grant for training might be in order.

For now I'm satisfied that a number of folks have had a mental exercise of great worth that was excited by the photograph of a thirteen year old. I would not be surprised to find that a great deal more remains to be learned about these little critters.

Doc, I sure wish you would change the title of this thread. It's giving me the willies!! Please, oh, please, don't start a group to protect them..........

While shrews smell terrible and the reason cats don't eat them (owls will!), they do eat the insects in your yard...good for those flower bulbs!! On the other hand, voles eat grasses as well as tubers...not so good...but cats, owls, foxes etc. will eat them! The largest, and the easiest to identify, shrew in the US is the short-tailed shrew, the others being no more than a couple of inches long. Shrews are such ravenous eaters due to their very high metabolic rate that they must eat at least their weight in insects, larvae, worms, grubs, every 4 hours or will die of hunger!!

I missed a question up there somewhere...........how large was the animal pictured. Ans: Two and a half times the length of that two seeded peanut. The critter certainly would not sit still for a measurement. LOL

In the second pix an ear is indicated. In the flip flop pix the left hand and shoulder is shown with a right hand on the ground. The head is peeking to its right. What you see between his legs might indicate that this is a male. The conversion from what we normally see to what is seen in his escape mode flip flop to me is amazing. Could this be an animal trick to not look like dinner to prey?

If you can see that it is a male then it is a vole as a shrew has internal testes. I have done research in the field on both animals and have met/conversed with one of the US's foremost authorities on shrews. He has since passed away. I really enjoyed the work. While my areas of study were mostly on population density, social structures, burrows, food storage, and winter nesting associations, my husbands areas of study included physiology, ecology . and population analyses. We both studied small mammals of all species found in this area.
His flip flop could indeed be as you have proposed or a quicker means of turning to escape.
GREAT fun!!!!