Field mouse (lat.Apodemus agrarius) - a small animal with a brown or dark gray color of the back and a grayish abdomen. Voles have relatively large ears, and a dark stripe stretches along the back. The body of the mouse is up to 15 cm, and the tail is the same length as the body, or slightly longer.
Field mice inhabit large colonies, the area of one hole reaches 10 square meters. m, she has 44 exits, up to 10 nests and about 20 food stores. For a month, the male throws out almost 60 kg of earthen soil.
Despite the external harmlessness, this animal delivers 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 a clover field because it destroys their nests by eating honey and larvae.
Habitat
The field mouse is widespread in Ukraine, in the European part of the former USSR territory, and is also found in southern Siberia, eastern Kazakhstan and the Far East.
Polesie and the Carpathians, the coasts of the Azov and Black Seas, except for the arid regions of the Sivash steppes, are places where the vole feels very comfortable. In small forests, mainly in shelterbelts and forest stands, there are as many of them as forest mice.
Spreading west to the Carpathians, field voles most often gather on cultivated fields or hills, rising above sea level to a height of 1350 m. In those places that they chose for their residence, field mice most often settle in places with high humidity. These are meadows and fields covered with shrubs, covered with weeds in the cultivated areas. The field mouse willingly settles in vineyards, orchards, at the edges of dense deciduous plantations, in river valleys.
The voles dig their own holes not deep, but long enough, they are easily established between the roots of shrubs and trees. In the cold season, field mice accumulate in hucks of straw and hide under fallen leaves in gardens and scaffolds. Sometimes they climb into housing and utility buildings and in granaries. The field mouse is active for whole days, but most often it can be found at night. In winter hibernation, the vole does not occur; it remains awake throughout the year.
Field mouse nutrition
Almost the entire year, voles feed on green leaves and stems, as well as seeds of wild herbs, various berries and grains during the ripening of bread. Often in their diet there are small insects, larvae and invertebrate animals.
Breeding
The period of active breeding is spring. To bring the kids out, the field mouse usually arranges a nest chamber at a shallow depth (about 20 cm, sometimes deeper), which is well covered with dry grass and chopped straw. Several exits lead from the nesting chamber to the surface. Quite often, mice arrange semi-underground nests between stones, under heaps of straw and in other shelters.
Throughout the year, up to four offspring occur in field mice, each of which contains five to eight cubs. Pregnancy lasts 22 days with a break between offspring of approximately two months in the warm season. Muscles are born completely helpless, naked, blind. Moreover, they grow and develop quite actively, quickly covered with fluff, and at ten days of age it is difficult to distinguish them 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 forest plantations and fruit trees, field mice cause significant harm to gardening and forestry, and in the years favorable for breeding, there are so many of them that it is difficult to estimate the losses caused to grain crops (rye, wheat, corn and other), green shoots and ripened grain.
In nature, field mice have many enemies: foxes, weasels, ferrets and birds of prey prey on them, most often owls.