Country & Coast: Can you dig it? Meet the many-coloured mole

One of the most peculiar parcels I received through the post contained a silvery white mole – a dead one I might add – together with a brief note asking if I'd ever encountered such a creature. But there was no signature or address. In fact, that mole was not particularly unusual, because our fascinating mouldiwarps come in coats of various colours.

That one was not an albino because it lacked pink eyes and feet, but it sported a beautifully clean coat that was almost pure white with just a hint of silvery grey. It was not the first mole of this colour that I have encountered but sadly, all the others, like this one, were deceased.

During my morning walks, I have seen lots of moles alive and digging in the wild or else marooned on tarmac roads. Those that were digging, I left alone as they pumped up the earth on steep verges as their newly-excavated soil slid away to reveal the busy creature at work, oblivious to passing traffic.

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I collected those that were marooned in the middle of the road or lane and released them in the nearest field, their forefeet digging the whole time. It is not easy holding a mole in bare hands; that's when their amazing strength can be appreciated. They can part one's fingers like a warm knife slipping through butter.

Every living mole that I have seen has been velvety black with surprisingly clean fur despite living underground, but they can sport different coats that intrigue observers. Creamy white, grey, piebald and even a variety with apricot-coloured fur can be found. Indeed, a mole catcher of my acquaintance recently caught a golden mole on a local farm, and soon afterwards the farmer living on the same site found another of that colour.

This opens the question of whether moles of different colours live in families or whether they are isolated cases, perhaps somehow linked to the earth in which they live. Or could it be the result of their diet? It's interesting that two golden moles should be found on one small parcel of land.

Their main source of food is a non-stop diet of earthworms and I wonder if the soil consumed by those worms might be somehow responsible for colouring the moles' coats. A mole eats about half its own weight of earthworms every day, the reason being that worms, themselves full of earth, are not very nutritious. A lot are needed to satiate a mole.

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Unlike other animals whose colours differ from the normal, moles of many colours are not at great risk from predators because they live mainly underground and, in addition their skins possess glands that make them obnoxious to hunting animals. The mole's main threat is from owls and I would think that a silver or white mole exploring overland at night would be highly vulnerable.

The northern name of "mouldiwarp" is thought to derive from "molde" meaning earth and "werpen" meaning to throw, but in my part of Yorkshire we call them "mowdies" irrespective of their colour.

CW 29/5/10

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