Sunday, 10 April 2011

A Little Nature Mystery.

The lawn had its first mow of the year today, and while I was out there I saw a couple of interesting creatures.

The first was a Clouded Yellow butterfly. It’s the first one I’ve seen since the last time we had a warm, sunny April in 2007. I hope it wasn’t a bad omen, though. We had no summer in 2007, just low temperatures, consistently grey skies and a hell of a lot of rain.

The second was a tiny rodent that came toddling towards me while I was sitting at the garden table having a cup of tea. It was so small that at first I thought it was a shrew, but when it got closer I saw that it had the stubby nose, small ears and short tail of a vole. But it was quite a lot smaller even than a vole, and had very long back legs, which voles don’t. Voles are burrowing creatures that scamper along on short legs. It definitely wasn’t a mouse or a shrew, and if it wasn’t a vole either, what the hell was it?

3 comments:

andrea kiss said...

A mole? Do you have those? Are they the same thing as voles? Whatever it was it sounds like a little cutie.

JJ said...

Oh yes, we get plenty of moles, but they're much bigger than either mice or voles. I have had an inspired thought, though. I realised that it's back legs were like a gerbil's, although it could only have been a baby. Maybe somebody's pregnant female escaped. That's my best guess so far.

andrea kiss said...

Could be.