Mouse (Harvest) - Overview

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Family: Muridae

Species: Micromys minutus

IUCN Status: Least Concern

Population Trend: Stable

Distribution: Europe and Asia, Japan and Korea. In Britain they are most common in the South and South-east but have been sighted in Cheshire, Wales, Yorkshire and even Edinburgh. Absent from Ireland.

Habitat: areas of tall grasses such as cereal crops (particularly wheat and oats), roadside verges, hedgerows, reedbeds, dykes and salt-marshes.

Description: reddish-brown fur with white underparts (darker brown in winter); naked, prehensile tail.

Size: length:- head & body, 5-7cm; tail 5-7cm
weight:- adult, about 6g.

Life-span: up to 18 months in the wild, but usually 6 months. Can live up to 5 years in captivity.

Food: mainly seeds and insects; also nectar and fruit.

The harvest mouse is the smallest rodent in Britain and weighs less than a 2 pence coin! It was first described accurately in 1767 by Gilbert White, a naturalist who lived in Selborne, Hampshire; he found it living in cornfields around his village - hence the name 'harvest mouse'.