NOVEMBER has certainly shown us that winter is well and truly on its way. We have had frosts, biting winds and driving rain and even just a little touch of snow.

To us, these less than clement climatic conditions are really no more than just the occasional inconvenience but to our wildlife they present a life and death trial. Much of our wildlife tries to avoid exposure to these conditions by fleeing to warmer countries, entering into a dormant phase of their lifecycles or allowing their bodies to enter into a state of hibernation.

Most of our smaller mammals chose hibernation. They build up their body fat supplies during the bounty of wild food that becomes available early in the autumn then rely on reducing the energy they bodies use, to make the most of this stored fat supply by shutting down all but the most essential parts of their body functions, until spring arrives and food in the wild once again becomes plentiful.

However, there is one small mammal that remains active right through the winter and this is the vole. Water voles were once a frequently encountered animal in and around the water courses of our district, but now they are nearly all but extinct. Their vulnerability to released fur trade mink resulted in the devastation of their population.

Fortunately the short tailed or field vole has faired much better as a species. This is really important as this species occupies a prime place at the bottom of natural food chain in our country and forms the principle diet of many birds of prey.

Voles are herbivores feeding on plants that grow out in the wild. Whilst plant life is nowhere near as vigorous in the winter months, it is still present, allowing the voles to feed through out the year. Even when the landscape is covered in snow, the voles can tunnel beneath to find their food.

Voles are also able to rapidly reproduce, in good conditions litters are able to be raised every five weeks. However, voles suffer terribly from a high mortality rate with an individual vole only having a 30 per cent chance of seeing each month through to the next. Predation is a big cause of loss with many voles being consumed by weasels, stoats, foxes, owls, snakes and birds of prey. Voles mark out territories using urine which produces an ultraviolet glow, a phenomenon that birds like kestrels can see and use to locate voles.

Whilst voles are superficially mouse-like I always feel they are one of our country’s cuter creatures and their plight out on the marshes this November certainly made me feel pitiful. The rain we had made the River Stour which flows through our district larger wetlands burst its banks and flood the marshland.

The poor voles, whose principle refuges are shallow underground burrows, were forced to flee to higher ground. Unfortunately the drier higher ground around these wetlands has in many areas either been cultivated or more formally managed giving the refugee voles little cover to hide from the their predators.

Voles are not renowned for their intelligence, having a smaller brain to body size than most mammals. However, one individual I encountered following the flooding certainly had my vote for ingenuity, even if it must have been a rather desperate measure, as he was using the cardboard body of a discarded firework as a makeshift shelter.

I can only hope that this paid off and once the flood water receded, he and other luck ones like him will begin again the process of repopulating our wetland with these rather charming little creatures.