Voles are also known as meadow mice, field mice and ground moles. They are not a mole, nor a mouse, nor a shrew.
I don’t think I have ever seen a shrew, so I looked it up. Shrews use the tunnels that a vole or mole makes, and they are mouse-like. However, shrews are so small (three to four inches) that they can fit into a tablespoon.
PennState Extension has a great factsheet on identifying these pests and how to tell the difference. Go to: https://extension.psu.edu/identifying-moles-voles-and-shrews
Voles are difficult to distinguish from mice as they are almost identical. However, a vole’s tail is much shorter than a mouse. A mouse’s tail is long.
The damage caused by voles is different from that caused by mice. Voles are fine outside during the winter and survive on a wide variety of plants. They are mostly herbivores feeding on grasses, forbs, and herbaceous plant material. In the fall and this time of the year, they eat bark.
Voles are semifossorial. I had to look that up as well. According to the Miriam-Webster online dictionary, it means that they are sometimes fossorial, which means that they are adapted to digging.
However, unlike moles, which dig tunnels well underground, voles tend to dig tunnels near the surface, just under the grass or ground cover plants. They destroyed the thyme by digging their surface tunnel through the plants.
You can easily see these surface tunnels, which resemble a shallow trench in the grass and mulch. They do not hibernate, so if you have voles in your landscape, they are working under the snow as you read this.
Once the snow melts, you may see these surface tunnels. If these are in the lawn, the turf in these areas usually dies, leaving a dead path of grass.
Because voles feed on bark, their damage can be significant, and you may not even realize it. As the weather warms up, plant growth begins, and vole damage becomes apparent.
A branch dies if they completely remove the bark around the entire branch (girdling). If they only chew parts of the bark, you still may see dieback or dead twigs. The only way to know what caused this is to get down to the base of the plant and check out the bark.
Fortunately, voles have very short life cycles; unfortunately, they have one to five generations per year.
Vole populations tend to rise and fall dramatically. I have seen huge populations with significant damage one year and none the next. They make great food for hawks and are easier to spot than moles which are typically underground.
I hope you enjoyed learning about the vole – I learned about shrews while writing this.
Pamela Corle-Bennett is the state master gardener volunteer coordinator and horticulture educator for Ohio State University Extension. Contact her by email at bennett.27@osu.edu.
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