What's making these holes in my lawn?

PeteW

There's a load of these holes, roughly an inch in diameter, all over my lawn.



Any suggestions as to what might be creating them, and how to best get rid of the critters? We've had moles before, but there are no mole hills in sight this time…

Cheers

Pete

martinthebandit

https://www.lawnsmith.co.uk/topic/pests-diseases/ants-bees


Almost certainly bees, active early due to the very mild weather, useful little critters and will be gone in a month or two.

spadoosh

Im going with voles they look way too big for bees and ants.

spadoosh

Yeh definitely voles, the more im looking the more i can see the paths they are taking.

RuthnJasper

I think that Spadoosh is right. Definitely looks characteristic of burrowing rodents. I'd hazard a guess that the lowest hole, near the OP's shoes, is the initial/main entry point, due to the scraping marks at the lower end.


https://guildford.gov.uk/article/18337/Pest-control- may be able to help or advise.


I wouldn't advocate the use of poison, as it gets into the food-chain (seen a number of owls and pet cats killed through eating a poisoned mouse/vole), but that's my personal viewpoint! Hopefully the critters will confine their activities to the garden (though that's annoying enough). x

Davesnave

If it's voles you'll probably just have to live with them, same as I do. There's so many in my hedges, I can often ram my arm in there up to the elbow, it's that tunnelled.


But it's no big deal. Look on the bright side; at least your lawn won't be waterlogged.

unrecordings

Couldn't see the picture for some reason. But here's another vote for not using poison. About an inch is too big for bees (or at least the ones I have which are like miniature mole hills, but barely the diameter of a pencil)
If it's vole or shrew, then local predators will likely keep them under control