myodes glareolus
Sunday, April 21, 2019 — 9:46 am
Böblingen, Germany — hiking trails through the woods along the Panzerstrasse
As I strolled through the woods near the Panzer Kaserne Barracks, I kept hearing rustling noises from either side of the path. I knew right away it wasn’t birds. I thought perhaps it might be lizards because we saw several on our hike up Rubble Hill a few days before.
I finally decided to track down what it was. It wasn’t hard. Wherever there was leaf litter on the ground, there was a colony of voles scurrying about. And they weren’t particularly hard to find once I figured out what I was looking in for.
The chief identification characteristic is the red back and gray sides. In the patch of leaves where I took these photos—which was maybe 20 feet by 20 feet—there must have been six or seven of them popping in and out of their holes.