Climbing Mouse

To encourage birds to find the camera nest box I put up some Sunflower seeds not to far away. The feeder is in the middle of a climbing Rose and is easy for small birds to get to. What I didn’t think about was that the rose gave little rodents a way to get to the feeder. And it didn’t take them long.

Blue Tits have been using the feeder too, they don’t seem to mind the mouse droppings on the tray. I can see the tray from a first floor window but from the ground it is above head height and it can be a bit painful reaching past the thorns to clean it.

The mouse has plenty of places to hide and breed, under stacked-up tiles, in a pile of bricks, under the shed, in plant pots and even inside a little burrow I have found under a Sage plant. I am OK with them as long as they stay out of the house.