A vole is a small furry animal that looks a lot like a mouse but is rounder and heavier, with a blunter nose, small ears half hidden in its fur, and a short tail — a mouse's tail is long and thin, a vole's is stubby. Voles live in grass and fields, along riverbanks, and in woods, eating grass, roots and seeds, and digging runs through the vegetation. They are common in Britain, Europe and North America, and are important food for owls, foxes and hawks; gardeners and farmers sometimes complain about them because they chew roots and bark. The best-known kinds in English are the field vole (also called the short-tailed field mouse), the bank vole, and the water vole, which swims and is the animal Ratty is based on in the children's book The Wind in the Willows — despite the name, he is a vole, not a rat. The word is neutral and slightly countryside-flavoured; you meet it in nature programmes, children's books and biology class rather than in daily conversation. Regular plural: voles.