For the past month I’ve been studying molehills. The focus of my investigations has been Sand Field, a rough pasture that was once part of a vast medieval deer park just south of the village. It all started last November. It was a crisp morning after gales. I’d paused to feel the sun’s weak warmth and heard a rustle in the grass. Already fleeing, a mole was little more than a glimpsed cylinder of fur and rippling muscle. I felt a rush of excitement – it was just the second I’d ever seen.
I’d almost forgotten this encounter. Then, returning last month, I stumbled – literally – on a fresh molehill. Instead of waiting a decade to bump into another mole, I thought, perhaps I should make some effort to understand them.
The signs of their business are everywhere, after all. When a mole tunnels, displaced soil is eventually pushed to the surface. Like a tube map without lines, patterns of heaped spoil hint at the winding routes below. I’m monitoring six such territories, and I’ve found a tunnel entrance in two of them. It’s peak breeding season, so these may mark where roving males have emerged, off in search of a mate.
In another spot, my photos capture a major extension of the network: a row of 11 new mounds. These are testament to the mole’s extraordinary physical adaptations. Moles raise soil – up to 20 times their own body weight – by shoving it above their heads. The muscles in a mole’s chest and shoulders are so big that it has evolved a strengthened and extended sternum to anchor them. Elongated wrist bones add a wide flange, resembling a sixth digit, to the hands that do the lifting and digging.
Molehills can be a nuisance. Like weeds, they’re largely ignored until they pop up in unwanted places, offending our sense of control. Yet they also connect us to the teeming life beneath our feet. Across some of the older mounds, the leaves and stolons of creeping buttercup lay delicate traceries. Fresher excavations are laced with fine roots, mycelium and upturned worms. In one, I found a queen early bumble bee (Bombus pratorum). Muddied and slow, she was likely to have been hibernating when the mole’s labours thrust her prematurely into spring.
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