Dan Forman and his students from Swansea University had a suprise when trapping at Morfa Berwig water vole project site in October. They have been surveying and monitoring the water vole population here for over a year but were not prepared for the unusual water vole they trapped in their latest survey session. They trapped a rare water vole showing very distinctive colouring. This rare ‘morph’ had a black backside, brown flanks, ginger face and belly and a huge white patch between the shoulder blades.  Many voles do have a small number of white hairs in this location but Dan has never seen anything like this in over 11 years of trapping. Berwick trapping has produced an unusually high diversity of colour forms in the population there. Dan and his students hope to look more into this phenomenon – for a comparatively small site Morfa Berwig is certainly throwing up some surprises!