Water vole. At Last!

There is an elderly lady in the village who surreptitiously leaves out food for the birds. It is often small pieces of bread, but always in a relatively large quantity. She deposits this food in different places, but with a degree of consistency. One of the spots she chooses is in a small field near the stream just before it passes under the road. Coming passed this morning, I noticed the pile of bread and decided to wait a moment or two to see if anything should approach. Within a very short time, a brown creature emerged from the bank of the stream and scurried towards the bread. Grabbing a chunk, it quickly retraced its steps. I had no doubt whatsoever that this was a rat.
Watching the rat repeat the process, I noticed something else in the corner of my eye. At first sight, this appeared to be a juvenile rat. It was certainly smaller than the creature I had first seen, though of a similar colouration, a juvenile, I presumed.
The first thing that raised my suspicions, was the fact that it was taking a much more stealthy approach than the rather bold manner of the rat. Once it had a piece of bread it moved back to the stream and swam across the water. On its third visit, its retreat took it upstream, and whilst doing so, it flipped on its head and submerged with a 'plop'. This confirmed that what I was watching was in fact a water vole. Further observation confirmed this, especially on seeing that the ears of the rat were very prominent but those of the vole were hardly visible.
After two years of trying to see voles on this particular stream, I was finally rewarding on what is its most unprepossessing and most public stretch.
I intend to take some chopped apple along to see if I can lure it out again and perhaps get some photographs.