Video- Nellie Struggling to find water voles

Water voles are not as common in the Lyon catchment as they were at the top of Glen Lochay, although their overall distribution is good, just their density is not as high. Suitable habitat is pretty fragmented up in the high corries. A high % of suitable habitat has water vole burrows from previous years, but many of them do not have signs from 2008. Nellie is new to the survey work this summer, he is logging habitat and is able to find burrows OK, but struggling so far to find droppings from 2008, but then the rest of us are as well. Not finding something in a particular situation is a result in itself of course, it does not mean you cannot find them, it often means that they are not there! In our survey work, some days you have to go a long, long way for relatively little information, other days everything happens at the same time. Finding these fragmented water vole populations is very valuable......