Harvest mice have incredibly good hearing and are very quick to escape, which makes them extremely difficult to see. However, if you know where to look, and you get really lucky, you might just find evidence of where they live.
Good harvest mice habitat is long tussocky grassland, farmland, reed beds and hedgerows, where they can construct their tiny nests from the abundant grasses.
They build two types of nest, both constructed from interwoven lengths of grass. Smaller ones which they use day to day, often frequenting several, and bigger nests which they use when breeding. The bigger nests expand with the growing brood.
Although they look like a messy mass of strands, a good sign that you have found a harvest mouse nest is that it can be picked up between thumb and finger and it will hold itself together.
On a recent survey we found several nests, including a couple of day nests. The images below shows the contrast in size between the smaller day nests and a breeding nest. The breeding nest is also shown in my hand for scale.
Harvest mice are the smallest rodents in Britain and Europe, weighing between about 5 and 10 grams. They have orangey coloured fur and a distinctive prehensile tail, which they use to hold onto stems as they move through the vegetation.
