New York’s records for the meadow vole top 2,100, spread across Adirondack Park, Long Island, the Shawangunk Ridge, Fire Island National Seashore, and the Niagara River corridor. That’s a wide spread for an animal most people never see, moving instead through grass too thick to look into.
Grasslands built by beavers and by people
Meadow voles live in the runway systems they cut through thick grass and sedge, and New York offers that habitat in more than one form. In the Adirondacks, old beaver ponds that have silted in leave behind open, wet meadow patches inside the forest, exactly the kind of grassy opening this vole favors. Along the Niagara River corridor, floodplain grass and marsh edges do the same job on a larger scale.
The Shawangunks’ famous vole-hunting grounds
The Shawangunk Ridge holds one of the best-known meadow vole stories in the state. The Shawangunk Grasslands, a former airfield turned national wildlife refuge, draws wintering short-eared owls and northern harriers specifically because its open fields hold so many voles, a big enough concentration that birders travel from across the region to watch raptors hunt there.
A fall surge in the records
Records peak in October, well after the summer breeding season that lets a female meadow vole produce several litters in a single year. That combination of fast breeding and more voles moving through the grass by autumn likely explains why records climb as the season goes on.
Status in New York
NatureServe ranks the meadow vole S5, secure, and it’s native to New York. Frequently recorded almost everywhere in the state, it forms the food base beneath everything from the Shawangunks’ wintering owls to the foxes and hawks working New York’s other grasslands and meadows.
