What's making these holes?

Hi folks,
I became a member today in search of information on what might be making these holes in my lawn. There are six or eight and Iv'e attached a pic of a pair that were close together.

I measured five and the were all about 3cm diameter and, measured with a straight rod, around 16cm deep. But I then discovered that they were angled at the bottom and deeper. The picture shows the probe I pushed into the left-hand hole and from the tape to the tip is 23cm!

Anyone have any ideas?

 

Welcome to the forum Stigland.
mice maybe or some form of small rodent as a guess.

 

It could be a vole.

 

Could be bees. In the case of rodents, there is usually evidence of excavated soil. Just a thought.

 

My first thought was bees, but 3cm seems too wide for bees also bees tend to have a mound of fine crumbs of soil around the hole.

 

I had bank voles and they made holes like that with no soil around the top of the hole

 

I once watched a magpie burying some cob nuts in my garden.

 

Rodent holes don’t always have soil around them, rats holes do not always have soil and rabbit bolt holes are just small holes with not a sliver of soil around them.

 

yup, i have the same problem... and i quite often find the ground caving in beneath my feet. So there are tunnels under the holes. By process of elimination (and guesswork) I figured out it was most likely voles.. haven't done anything about it though.

 

I'm currently watching gardeners world, and Monty has just shown a couple of vole holes, looks very similar.

 

Interesting thread. Mentioning rabbit bolt holes. I have a friend who is the great outdoor man, if you get my drift. Any way, he always seemed to have that, 'hard luck' story. He had a good job, self employed tree surgeon etc. So Mark asked me to go with him to some large gardens that were plagued with rabbits. So on a very cold and frosty morning we entered the garden. Rough grassland and neglected rhodo beds. Holes everywhere. Both Mark and I had a couple of our ferrets with us and plenty of nets.

Strange how ground frosts present you with a different map. Mark was eager to get started. Out came his nets and had I not stopped him, he'd have netted every hole in the area.

The frost really made fresh scattered soil show up. So several holes indicated the age and lack of usage. Mark soon cottoned on and we chose which holes to net. Namely holes with no sign of scattered soil. Here we pegged our nets. Fourteen bunnies in the bag, and we called it a day. Mark and family had a few rabbit pies.

Thinking of burrowing, tunnelling etc. It is always a good point to remember. The digger always disperses the soil backwards not in fron of him/its self.

 

I use to ferret a lot Mike, still shoot and fish when I get the time. We use to find a thorny stick as some holes were shallow hide hole and you would insert the stick and twist and pull out the rabbit.
I was a bit of a poacher a long time back and one technique to catch the trout from a local river was to hang a rabbit over the swim on a branch, wrap branches around it and tie and let the flies do the rest. A constant drip of maggots into the spot and kept the trout in the area.
We use to fish in the gamekeepers back garden! It was the last place he would ever check.

 

Thanks folks - all very interesting and helpful including the anecdotes! I think the voles have it. I probed one of the holes a little more invasively and found it was at least 40 cm long, so a tunnel rather than a hole. As ever it has raised another question. None of the holes showed any sign of excavated soil - so where did that go?