Field mouse (Microtus arvalis)

Taxonomic classification

It’s incidence, habitat

The homeland of the field mouse middle and north Europe, and the western part of middle and north Asia. In Hungary with the exception of the closed forests quasi everywhere can be found.
It’s habitat areas, ploughmen, meadows opened. Spread broadwise in Europe, in the mountains 2000 m penetrates.

Appearance

It’s body length 9-12,5 cm, it’s tail length 3-4,5 cm, it’s mass 14-50, mostly cca. 20 g. It’s fur coat from the drab one changes until the yellow one, there are short, thickset hairs on the inner side of it’s auricle. Europe is a feature and it’s frequentest vole race. Because of the similar races only special stamps, pl. the occlusal surface of the teeth (enamel loops) it is possible to separate it on it’s basis.

Nourishment

The field mouse is a very gluttonous agricultural pest. Eats an all kinds of plant material: seed, grasses, roots, letters, fruits, berries, acorn and walnut figure on it’s menu. Everything tillage damages a plant quasi, from the cereals started through the alfalfa and the corn to the carrot and the potato.

Habits

Treeless, the inhabitant of open fields, ploughmen, meadows. Not only dry, but may occur on swampy meadows. It lives on areas cultivated agriculturewise the most mostly. Corn-stalks put into the pyramids in autumn, it is possible to find many voles concerned under the sheaves of grain, bale piles, hay stacks. It may withdraw into the houses, stables in winter.

It digs services in cca. 20-30 cm of depth under the land. It’s services consist of a central pantry and exits settling down in a beam shape. Lines the central section of house with dry grass, straw, letters who.

It does not sleep a hibernation. It digs long corridors, which it lines with grass, under the blanket of snow in winter.

The field mouse sociable animal, and than lives with it’s companions in a pretty friendship like tit’s. The animals at least evenly, but they hang around in more more frequently big teams together, and on the stubble one of the holes it’s other immediate vicinity visible.

Reproduction

The field mouse quick and may proliferate on an incredible manner. The female sows 4-12 kids seven times even annually after 3 weekly pregnancies. The little ones barely and blindly, they are born in a subterranean nest. Their mother breast-feed, the third until 2 weeks on a week already independent and sexually mature. The overpopulation until an autumn being late because of an early spring in favourable years, on those countries, may be in a whole year where the winter is mild. If the much rain and the wet one, cool weather do not destroy the young persons in the nest, the gradation may be repeated in 3-4. year on all of them. To see the voles, the big substance density everywhere on it’s time more at tit’s time they stay on the surface. The natural enemies of a bar, than the fox, the ermine, the weasel, the kestrel, the red falcon and the owls destroy a lot from among them, their reproduction so much fast, that the predators cannot keep pace with tit’s. It is chewed off totally on the edges of the ploughmen and along the roads here and there, especially the lawn, but the gradation collapses automatically later. The whacking individual density induces a stress effect, which influences their reproduction unfavourably, at the field mice. Adrenalin their level grows by leaps and bounds. They stay more on the surface, their territories cease partly, sickly behaviour changes occur, that collectively the overpopulation express, they lead to it’s sudden collapse quasi.

It’s role in the soil

Than generally the soil mammals, than the mole, gopher, hamster, the services of the field mouse (krotovinák) important in terms of the soil, it plays a role in the vertical mixing of the substance of the soil from within on it. The breeze of the soil, a water leader's ability increase by way of it. Besides in what he plays a role yet, it the vegetal pests' destruction, yielding possibly may cause a problem in it's ravaging.