Devon SSSI nature reserve and eco lodges - Maggie's Blog
23 March
Vole's nest and butterfly...
In the end I decided to let them be, and put the plastic and the nest back. I might regret that later, but then it's only a tiny corner of the garden that I'm beginning to cultivate, so what's one more vole family?
The dahlias, some from my grandfather's garden, displaced a different piece of black plastic.
It was a lovely sunny Saturday - time to get the dahlias in the ground for cut flowers in the lodges over the summer. Except when we took the black plastic off the flower bed, we found someone else had already bagged the spot...
Definitely not a dormouse - not with those fresh green buttercup leaves. So I didn't feel too bad about taking a peek. We found three little babies. It was a short tailed vole's nest I think. So - what to do? It was all a bit too close to the greenhouse and the fruit cage. Surely they'll be nibbling things they shouldn't if I left them? I wondered about taking them up the drive to Sally's owls, but it seemed a bit mean.
And yesterday, in the sunshine, I saw my first butterfly of the year - a tatty peacock just out of hibernation.
A sunny day or two makes all sorts of things seem possible.