Nature Note:Meadow Vole

A meadow vole(Microtus pennsylvanicus) scampered across the driveway one August morning,from under a hedge to under an eastern red cedar.It was a rare sighting of the small mammal,a rodent most people never realise is around.They mainly eat grasses,roots,twigs and other vegetable matter and do not come indoors;nor are they considered a pest.*The meadow vole's colouration is variable,from reddish to blackish brown or gray,and it has a short tail.They range from Northern Canada and Alaska down the Rockies and Appalachians south to New Mexico and Northeast Georgia,favouring meadows,marshes and woodland glades.*These rodents have a system of runways and burrows.Prolific,they nest below ground or under rocks and logs in a grass or shredded bark nest.In winter,they nest under the snow.They are sometimes called field mice,and some species of voles are known for a cyclic buildup and crash of population,keyed to the food supply.*The meadow vole is pretty much of a ghostly creature.In more than 20 years,I have only noted them a handful of times along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border.

Sapsucker Winter Visitor

The yellow-bellied sapsucker has been seen wintering in the lower elevations of the Mid-Atlantic region,fond of the parks,woodlots and suburbs that are abundant there.It is always a bird of open woods,breeding from Canada and Alaska south through much of the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains,and around the Great Lakes,in boreal and transition forests.
About 21 centimeters long,or 8 and a half inches,this nearly silent woodpecker has mottled black and white plumage with dull yellow on its belly and a splash of red on the crown and throat-females are red only on the throat.It is known for the neat rows of holes it drills in tree bark,from which it drinks sap with its tongue and eats insects caught in the sap.
A woodsman may be busily working in the forest,only to catch a pleasant glimpse of this attractive northern creature,which seems to calmly accept humans who are performing legitimate tasks.The sapsucker expects people to be working around its home.Since it favors working forests and their scattered clearings,it doesn't have a problem with the woodland laborer.