The Harvest Mouse (Micromys minutus) is the UK’s smallest mammal weighing in at around 7g and exhibiting the only truly prehensile tail which it uses to grasp stalks with whilst living an arboreal existence during the summer months. It is however on the UK BAP list as it is believed that their population numbers have declined.

 

So what is the situation in Oxfordshire? Well very little recording of harvest mice has been done in our county with the vast majority of records actually coming from several small WildCRU (Oxford University) research projects and until we get more records for harvest mice how will we know whether or not this small mammal species is declining?

 

So in light of that, The Oxfordshire Mammal Group organised and ran a Harvest Mouse Nest Training Day at BBOWT’s Chimney Meadows in November 2014. Searching for harvest mouse nests in early winter is the best and easiest method to find these elusive mice. Although the density of nests does not provide a true population estimate because females build a nest for every new litter and males will build nests too, it does provide more information than just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to their presence especially when taking into consideration changes in habitat, farm management and breeding success.