Harvest Mouse
| Harvest Mouse Fossil range: Late Miocene - Recent |
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| Micromys minutus (Pallas, 1771) |
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 Distribution of harvest mice
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The Harvest Mouse, Micromys minutus is a small rodent native to Europe and Asia. They are typically found in fields of cereal crops such as wheat and oats as well as long grass and hedgerows. They have reddish-brown fur with white underparts and a naked, highly prehensile tail. An adult has a head and body between five and seven centimeters with a similar length of tail and weighs five to eleven grams. This mouse eats chiefly seeds and insects but also nectar and fruit. Breeding nests are spherical constructions woven from grass and attached to stems high above the ground.
Before the Harvest Mouse had been formally described, Rev. Gilbert White, who sensed that they were an undescribed species, reported their nests in Selborne, Hampshire:[1] "They never enter into houses;" he wrote, "are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves; abound in harvest; and build their nests amidst the straws of the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest composed of the blades or grass or wheat.
One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted,[2] and composed of the blades of wheat; perfectly round, and about the size of a cricket-ball. It was so compact and well-filled, that it would roll across the table without being discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that were naked and blind."
Conservation efforts have taken place in England as of 2001. Tennis balls used in play at Wimbledon have been recycled to create artificial nests for harvest mice in an attempt to help the species avoid predation and come back from near-threatened status.
See also, Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse, an endangered rodent endemic to the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Amori (1996). Micromys minutus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006.
- Young Peoples Trust for the Environment Fact Sheet
- BBC Wildfacts
- BBC News 'New Balls Please' For Mice Homes
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