Holes that suddenly appear in your lawn can be unsightly and problematic, interrupting your manicured grass and posing a trip hazard. To remedy the situation, you need to know what's causing the holes but in many cases, the insects or animals causing the situation do their work at night or out of sight.
This can make it challenging to know why there are holes in your yard, especially if they lack the characteristic mounds that are associated with animals like moles and gophers.
By taking a closer look at the size, shape, and location of the holes in your yard with no mounds, you can narrow down the possibilities and formulate a strategy to put the digging to an end.
Causes of Holes in Your Yard With No MoundsVoles
Unlike moles, voles will make holes in your yard that don't have any excavated dirt mounded at the entryway. Instead, a hole created by a vole will be about the size of a golf ball but fairly shallow and sometimes oval in shape.
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Yellow Jackets
Yellow jackets will frequently utilize a hole left behind by rodents as a tunnel to an underground nest. Because of that, the holes in your yard that are connected to a yellow jacket nest might vary in size or shape but they are usually found in dry soil and grow over time (as the nest becomes bigger underground) and might have a bit of debris piled up around the entrance.
Visually observing yellow jackets entering and exiting the hole is the best way to know if it's an entry point to a yellow jacket nest.
Ground-Nesting Bees
Some varieties of bees nest in the ground, using an access hole to reach an underground nest. Bumble bees live in social groups centered around a hive and might use an abandoned rodent hole as an entry point to the hive.
Other species of bees, like the sweat bee or cellophane bee, are solitary and dig small tunnels in the dirt to lay eggs under the ground.
To identify holes made by ground-nesting bees, look for small holes up to ½-inch wide in dry, sandy soil.
Rabbits
Female rabbits will often build a shallow nest in the ground to conceal their young. Look for what appears to be a dead patch of grass; in the case of a rabbit's nest, you'll find the hole lined with dead grass and fur and then covered with leaves or other vegetation to conceal the young rabbits.
Skunks
If a group of holes pops up in your yard overnight, it may be the aftermath of a skunk digging for grubs.
Holes in your yard from a skunk are usually a few inches or less in diameter and shallow enough that you can see the bottom of the hole (it doesn't lead to a tunnel).
Chipmunks
A hole with no mound that leads to a tunnel might be caused by a chipmunk. These small rodents create clean, round holes about two inches in diameter to lead to an underground burrow system.
To make it harder for predators to see the hole, chipmunks pack the excavated dirt into their cheeks while digging and carry it away from the hole-leaving no mound around the entrance.
