Harvest mouse

Field mouse (Latin Apodemus agrarius) is a small animal with a brown or dark gray back color and a grayish abdomen. Voley have relatively large ears, and along the back stretches a dark strip. The body of the mouse - up to 15 cm, and the tail along the length is the same as the body, or slightly longer.

Field mice settle in large colonies, the area of one burrow reaches 10 square meters. M, it has 44 exits, up to 10 nests and about 20 food storages. For a month the male throws out almost 60 kg of ground soil.

Despite external harmlessness, this animal gives a lot of trouble to a person and his neighbors from the animal world. The field mouse is the enemy of bumblebees who live on the clover field, because it destroys their nests by eating honey and larvae.

Habitat

The field mouse is common in Ukraine, on the European part of the former USSR territory, and also occurs in southern Siberia, eastern Kazakhstan and the Far East.

Polesie and Carpathians, the coasts of the Azov and Black Seas, in addition to the arid regions of the Prisivash steppes, are places where the voles feel very comfortable. In small forests, mostly in shelterbelts and perelesitsah, there are as many as forest mice.

Spreading west to the Carpathians, voles most often gather in cultivated fields or elevations, rising above sea level to a height of 1350 m. In the places that they chose for their residence, field mice most often settle in places with high humidity. This is overgrown with bushes meadows and fields, covered with weeds in the cultivated areas. Field mouse willingly settles in vineyards, orchards, on the fringes of thick deciduous plantings, in river valleys.

The burrows do not pull out the vole not deep, but long enough, they easily settle between the roots of bushes and trees. In the cold season, the field mice accumulate in the straw stacks and hide under fallen leaves in the gardens and perelesitsah. Sometimes they get into housing and economic buildings and into granaries. The field mouse is active for a whole day, but most often it can be found at night. In winter hibernation voles does not lie, throughout the whole year is awake.

Field Mice Feeding

Almost the whole year the voles feed on green leaves and stems, as well as seeds of wild grasses, various berries and grain during the ripening of the loaves. Often in their diet there are small insects, larvae and invertebrates.

Reproduction

The period of active reproduction is spring. To exclude children, the field mouse usually arranges at a shallow depth (somewhere 20 cm, occasionally deeper) a chamber for the nest, which is well covered with dry grass and chopped straw. Several outlets lead to the surface from the nest chamber. Quite often, mice also arrange semi-underground nests between stones, under heaps of straw and in other shelters.

During the year, field mice occur up to four litters, each with five to eight cubs. The duration of pregnancy is 22 days with a break between litters about two months in warm weather. Mice are born completely helpless, naked, blind. At the same time, they grow quite actively and develop, they quickly become covered with downy, and at the ten-day age they are difficult to distinguish from adults. Three-week-old mice are already independently involved in the search for food. After two and a half months the young field mouse begins to multiply.

Harm

Gnawing bark, green shoots in tree plantations and fruit trees, field mice cause significant damage to horticulture and forestry, and in years that are favorable for reproduction, so many are made that it is difficult to estimate the losses to crops (rye, wheat, corn and Other), green shoots and ripe grain.

In nature, field mice have many enemies: they are hunted by foxes, weasels, ferrets and birds of prey, most often owls.