field mouse (lat. Apodemus agrarius) - a small animal with a brown or dark gray color of the back and greyish abdomen.Voles have relatively large ears and along the back runs a dark stripe.The body of the mouse - to 15 cm and a tail length is the same as the body, or a little longer.
Field mice settle in large colonies, the area of one hole up to 10 square meters.m, it has 44 outputs, and 10 slots and 20 feed warehouses.For a month the male emits nearly 60 kg of earth ground.
Although seemingly harmless, this animal gives a lot of trouble the man and his neighbors from the animal world.Field Mouse - the enemy of bees that live in clover field, because it destroys their nests, eating honey and larvae.
Habitats
Field Mouse widespread in Ukraine, the European part of the former territory of the Soviet Union, and is also found in southern Siberia, eastern Kazakhstan, and the Far East.
Polesie and the Carpathian Mountains, the coast of the Azov and Black seas, except for dryland prisivashskih steppes - a place where voles feels very comfortable.In small forests, mainly in shelter belts and perelesitsah, so many of them, how many and wood mice.
spread westward to the Carpathian Mountains, voles often gather in the treated fields or hills, rising above sea level to a height of 1350 m. In the places they have chosen for their homes, field mice often settle in areas with high humidity.It is overgrown with bushes meadows and fields covered with weeds in the treated areas.Field Mouse willingly settled in the vineyards, the gardens on the edge of the dense deciduous forests, river valleys.
Nora voles dig themselves are not deep, but long enough, they are settling easily between the roots of shrubs and trees.In cold weather, field mice collected in stacks of straw and hide under leaves in gardens and perelesitsah.Sometimes they get into housing and farm buildings and silos.The field mouse is active during the whole day, but most of it can be seen at night.In hibernation vole are not lies, throughout the year is awake.
Dining field mice
almost all year voles feed on green leaves and stems, and seeds of wild grasses, a variety of berries and grain during the ripening crops.Often in their diet are small insects, larvae and invertebrates.
Reproduction
active reproduction period - spring.For removing kids usually arranges a field mouse at a shallow depth (about 20 cm, occasionally deeper) camera to the nest, which is good carpets the dry grass and chopped straw.From the nest chamber to the surface are a few exits.Quite often, the mouse suit and semi-subterranean nests between the stones, under piles of straw and other shelters.
Throughout the year, field mice have up to four litters case, in each of which five - eight pups.Duration of pregnancy - 22 days with a break between the offspring of about two months in the warm season.Pups are born completely helpless, naked, blind.However, they are actively growing and developing rapidly covered with down, and in ten age it is difficult to distinguish from adults.Three-week pups already involved in the search for their own food.After two and a half months young field mouse begins to multiply.
harm
nibbling the bark of green shoots in the forest plantations and fruit trees, click the field cause significant damage to horticulture and forestry, and in the years favorable for breeding, they become so numerous that it is difficult to estimate the losses caused grain crops(rye, wheat, corn and other), the green shoots and ripened grain.
In nature, field mice have many enemies: they hunt foxes, weasels, ferrets and birds of prey, owls often.
