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The Harvest Mouse, Micromys minutus is a small rodent
Rodent

Rodentia is an Order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing Incisors#The_Rodent_incisor in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....
 native to Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
 and Asia
Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
. They are typically found in fields of cereal
Cereal

Cereals, or cereal grains, are mostly Poaceae cultivated for their edible brans or fruit seeds . Cereal grains are grown in greater quantities and provide more energy worldwide than any other type of crop; they are therefore staple foods....
 crops such as wheat
Wheat

Wheat , is a worldwide cultivated Poaceae from the Levant region of the Middle East. Globally, after maize, wheat is the second most-produced food among the cereal just above rice....
 and oat
Oat

The common oat is a species of Cereal Agriculture for its seed, which is known by the same name . While oats are suitable for human consumption as oatmeal and rolled oats, one of the most common uses is as livestock feed....
s as well as long grass and hedgerows. They have reddish-brown fur with white underparts and a naked, highly prehensile tail. An adult has a head and body between five and seven centimeters with a similar length of tail and weighs five to eleven grams. This mouse eats chiefly seed
Seed

A seed is a small Plant embryogenesis plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some Food storage. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant....
s and insects but also nectar and fruit.






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The Harvest Mouse, Micromys minutus is a small rodent
Rodent

Rodentia is an Order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing Incisors#The_Rodent_incisor in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....
 native to Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
 and Asia
Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
. They are typically found in fields of cereal
Cereal

Cereals, or cereal grains, are mostly Poaceae cultivated for their edible brans or fruit seeds . Cereal grains are grown in greater quantities and provide more energy worldwide than any other type of crop; they are therefore staple foods....
 crops such as wheat
Wheat

Wheat , is a worldwide cultivated Poaceae from the Levant region of the Middle East. Globally, after maize, wheat is the second most-produced food among the cereal just above rice....
 and oat
Oat

The common oat is a species of Cereal Agriculture for its seed, which is known by the same name . While oats are suitable for human consumption as oatmeal and rolled oats, one of the most common uses is as livestock feed....
s as well as long grass and hedgerows. They have reddish-brown fur with white underparts and a naked, highly prehensile tail. An adult has a head and body between five and seven centimeters with a similar length of tail and weighs five to eleven grams. This mouse eats chiefly seed
Seed

A seed is a small Plant embryogenesis plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some Food storage. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant....
s and insects but also nectar and fruit. Breeding nests are spherical constructions woven from grass
Grass

Grass is the common word that generally describes monocotyledonous green plants. The family Poaceae are the "true grasses" and include most plants grown as grains, for pasture, and for lawns ....
 and attached to stems
Plant stem

A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant. The stem is normally divided into nodes and internodes, the nodes hold buds which grow into one or more leaf, inflorescence , conifer cones or other stems etc....
 high above the ground.

Before the Harvest Mouse had been formally described, Rev. Gilbert White
Gilbert White

Gilbert White was a pioneering natural history and Ornithology.White was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He was educated by a private tutor in Basingstoke before going to Oriel College, Oxford....
, who sensed that they were an undescribed species, reported their nests in Selborne, Hampshire
Selborne

Selborne is a village in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is south of Alton, Hampshire.The nearest railway station is Alton railway station, north of the village....
: "They never enter into houses;" he wrote, "are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves; abound in harvest; and build their nests amidst the straws of the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistle
Thistle

Thistle is the common name of a group of flowering plants characterised by leaf with sharp prickles on the margins, mostly in the plant family Asteraceae....
s. They breed as many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest composed of the blades or grass or wheat.

One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted, and composed of the blades of wheat; perfectly round, and about the size of a cricket-ball
Cricket ball

A cricket ball is a hard, solid ball used to play cricket....
. It was so compact and well-filled, that it would roll across the table without being discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that were naked and blind."

Conservation efforts have taken place in England as of 2001. Tennis balls used in play at Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon

The Championships, Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is widely considered the most prestigious....
 have been recycled to create artificial nests for harvest mice in an attempt to help the species avoid predation and come back from near-threatened status.

See also, Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse
Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse

The Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse , also known as the Red-bellied Harvest Mouse, is an endangered species rodent endemic to the San Francisco Bay Area California coastal salt marshes in California....
, an endangered rodent endemic to the San Francisco Bay Area.

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