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Slightly larger than moles, voles are 5 to 8 inches long and resemble field mice with short tails, compact heavy bodies, small eyes, and partially hidden ears, says Smith.
Eastern meadow voles are active year-round [8] [9] and day or night, with no clear 24-hour rhythm in many areas. [10] Most changes in activity are imposed by season, habitat, cover, temperature, and other factors. Eastern meadow voles have to eat frequently, and their active periods (every two to three hours) are associated with food digestion.
Voles are seldom seen outside these runways, which enable a faster and safer locomotion and easier orientation. The climbing ability of the common vole is very poor. Underground nests are dug 30–40 cm (12–16 in) deep into the ground and are used for food storage, offspring raising, and as a place for rest and sleep.
Townsend's vole lives in a burrow system and creates runways among the vegetation in its habitat. The runways are used all year round by successive generations of voles and may be 2.5 to 5 cm (1 to 2 in) deep. [5] In the summer the voles may take advantage of the denser cover available and also move about elsewhere.
Voles thrive on small plants yet, like shrews, they will eat dead animals and, like mice and rats, they can live on almost any nut or fruit. In addition, voles target plants more than most other small animals, making their presence evident. Voles readily girdle small trees and ground cover much like a porcupine. This girdling can easily kill ...
Every year, an individual female beach vole typically produces two litters of three to five offspring, but most will live for less than one year. [6] The beach voles have a habit of building runways above or in the ground under the beach grass, in order to better stay hidden from aerial predators. These runways may contain cut grass.
The tundra vole (Alexandromys oeconomus) or root vole is a medium-sized vole found in Northern and Central Europe, Asia, and northwestern North America, including Alaska and northwestern Canada. [2] In the western part of the Netherlands , the tundra vole is a relict from the ice age and has developed into the subspecies Alexandromys oeconomus ...
Singing voles are at least semi-colonial animals, sharing burrows between family groups. They are active throughout the day, with no clear preference for sunlight or night time. They make runways through the surface growth, connecting feeding grounds to burrow entrances, although these are not as clear as those made by some other vole species.