Alaska records concentrate around Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the North Slope, tracing the dry, rocky alpine and subalpine ground this vole favors over the wet tundra meadows other Alaska voles prefer.
Most small Arctic rodents stay silent and rely on camouflage, but the singing vole gives itself away with a sharp, repeated call from a burrow entrance, an alarm that gave the species its name. Come late summer it cuts grasses and sedges into small haypiles near its burrow, a food-caching trick pikas use farther south, letting it survive a long snow season with nothing green left to eat.
Records cluster tightly in July and August, the short window when both the vole and the people watching for it are active above ground. That doesn’t mean the species disappears the rest of the year. Its breeding season is compressed into the same brief Arctic summer, with litters as large as 14 pups and several litters possible before the snow returns.
Full species profile
