麻豆社

Walking across this otherwise green sward on the top of the cliffs here you come across these patches where it looks as though the grass has died. And then you notice in fact there are these little holes all over the place. Have they got miniature rabbits here, or something? No, they don鈥檛. These are actually vole holes. Vole runs are like little tunnels that the Orkney vole uses to escape and travel down and sleep in. There鈥檚 no doubt there are several voles around Bill right now, and they are reputed to be much more docile than the mainland voles. Probably if he took an hour or two he would in fact be able to find one, but we haven鈥檛 got that length of time - so instead here鈥檚 a vole that's a little more handleable. The vole doesn't know this and bites Bill! So there鈥檚 a good tip; if you are in Orkney and you are fortunate enough to spot an Orkney vole don鈥檛 try and pick it up! They are plump and much bigger than the vole you might see on the mainland. This is because they鈥檙e not in fact related to the field voles that we get on the mainland at all. These little chaps arrived in Orkney with settlers something like 3500 BC. It鈥檚 proved that they鈥檙e actually related to voles from eastern Europe. They鈥檙e all over the place here, absolutely enormous numbers. The thing is there are no land predators on Orkney: no foxes, no stoats, no weasels, nothing like that. And let鈥檚 face it this place would probably sink under the weight of Orkney voles if there weren鈥檛 birds that regarded them as ideal food. And those of course are birds of prey.