The Magpie's Hoard

My furry little friend

This little bank vole lives in a dry stone wall near Agden Reservoir on the outskirts of Sheffield. Liz and I have seen it a few times whilst we've been out walking. It regularly pops out of a hole in the wall to pick up bits of birdseed.

Yesterday I decided to have a go at photographing the vole. I took a few shots but they were a bit distant. I returned to the site today and had another go. I used a close-focussing 50mm macro lens, with the camera mounted on a tripod.

At first the vole was extremely sensitive to the sound of the camera. As soon as I clicked the shutter it darted back into the wall. I got an awful lot of blurred pictures of its furry backside disappearing down the hole!

In attempt to freeze vole in its tracks, I cranked the shutter speed up to 1/500 second. As the scene was rather dimly lit, I had to set the ISO rating to 800 (about high as you can go with the Olympus E500 before the pictures start to look unacceptably grainy).

After a while, the vole seemed to become a bit more relaxed about the noise of the camera. I managed to get several fairly good shots of it posing in the entrance to its hole.

First Spawn

Last night was mild and damp - just the sort of weather to tempt amphibians out of their winter hiding places.

I took a stroll in the Rivelin Valley this morning and checked several ponds where I've seen frogs spawning in previous years. Eventually I spotted about a dozen frogs in shallow water on the far side of Swallow Wheel Dam. I took a closer look and located a solitary blob of frogspawn: the first of the season!

When I got home I entered my record into the Nature's Calendar website. I was surprised to find that the site has records of spawn being found as early as December. Most of these records are from the far south-west of Cornwall where, according to The Independent, they've had an exceptionally warm winter.

Springwatch starts here

February 19th has a special significance for me: it's the earliest date on which I've ever seen frogs spawning in the Sheffield area. When February 19th comes around, I know that spring will be here soon.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've signed up as a volunteer recorder with the Nature's Calendar project. When I noticed the date this morning, it prompted me to re-visit the project's website to see what I should be looking out for.

I'm afraid it's already too late for me to record some early spring events, such as the first time I spotted hazel catkins or the first time I heard a song thrush singing. However, I was able to record the first flower on a lesser celandine, which Liz spotted yesterday whilst we were walking in the Rivelin Valley.

I took a quick look at our garden pond this lunch-time: no sign of any fornicating frogs yet!