The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3075 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

---

This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
*****

Esmond Herbert, him from Sussex, invited me to luncheon the day after next. I agreed it and told Diane who had to reschedule a thing I had with one of my post grad students. I was going to show him how to find harvest mice nests. It astonished me that no one else had been able to do it. I have three hundred biology/ecology students in my department, you’d think one would know how to find them—harvest mice, or at least their nests.

It so happened I had a free afternoon that day, so I got Diane to text him to come and see me. He did, worried that his grant had been cut. It hadn’t but I did suggest he could have made more effort to learn how to find them.

“I did, Professor, I spent ages walking round reed beds where they were supposed to have them, and field edges and things, didn’t see nuthin’.”

I began to wonder if he could spot rubbish in a bin. “Meet me here at half past one. Wear the clothes you do for field work.” I pointed at the place on the map, Farlington Marshes.

“Are you coming, then?”

The fact that I had just told him to meet me there tended to indicate that. “Yes.”

“Oh wow, field work with the expert—thank you so much.” He was so excited he walked into the door frame as he went out of my room. I wondered how he’d got as far as he had, he might just get a master’s but that will be as far as he goes here unless he demonstrates something special in the next few hours.

I asked Diane to call a few others and offered them the same meeting. Then it was deal with a few letters, dictate a few more and go off home to change into my fieldwork clothes and grab some lunch. David had just made some bread and I ate it with butter melting into it and hunk of cheddar cheese and a quick salad which he made while I was changing. The cheese, bread, spring onion and tomato was delicious especially with some watercress, the mix of flavours-sharp-pungent and sweet with the salty taste of the cheese and the yeasty taste of the bread was tongue tingling and I suspect I ate more than I needed.

Then with wellingtons and walking boots loaded into the boot of my car I drove off to the marshes which are more renowned for their bird populations than small mammals, but harvest mice live in reed beds just as well as they do grassland and cornfields. In fact, except in places like Selborne, where Gilbert White lived, where the harvest mouse has recovered after conservation measures were introduced several years ago, they are declining. In fact it was first discovered there, so that has a nice touch to it. However, I didn’t have time to get permission to go rootling round at Selborne and according to the mammal atlas, they occur at Farlington—we’d soon find out.

I was pulling on my wellingtons when the others arrived and I checked the contents of my rucksack—binoculars, camera, notebook, specimen bags, boxes, tubes, hand lens, multi-tool and bottle of water, small first aid kit, plus a chocolate bar that had been there for some time. I also had a torch and of course my BlackBerry.

Altogether we were five: a colleague who was interested in improving their fieldwork skills, three students including my post grad one and me. The sun was shining but there was a cool breeze blowing onshore as is usually the case in these places. Farlington is at the top of Langston Harbour and the marshes are well known for their bird life, less so for other species such as terrestrial mammals which include predators like foxes and otters, rodents like rats and various mice of which the latter include harvest mice.

I did the health and safety bit then explained we needed to reconnoitre the reed beds for fairly dense growth which in my experience is where the harvest mice build their nests. I then showed them a couple of photos and a drawing from a mammal tracks, trails and signs book and explained we were essentially looking for a ball of grass or reeds which was attached to some of the reeds. The way to find them was simply to select a likely area of reeds and work your way through them, parting them with your hands and looking. I suggested if anyone found anything remotely like the photos to shout and we could all see it. I also reminded them that we were looking for old summer nests, which could vary in size from a single male nest to a female built nursing nest, which was bigger. The colour of the nest was likely to be the same colour as the reeds and they weren’t easy to find. It reminded me of the nut hunts looking for dormouse eaten nuts, where the chances are poor to unlikely, but it keeps children busy or in this case students.

We set off into the reeds mainly those on marshy ground rather than in water. I had my gloves on working my way through the reeds and like all of these search things, it helps to get your eye in if you actually see one. As I appeared to be the only one who’s actually done that, I wasn’t too optimistic given our team who were more enthusiastic than experienced being a newish lecturer in ecology who was all book knowledge and theoretical—in my defence I didn’t appoint him, my post grad student, Roger, who isn’t known for using his initiative or any other part of his cognitive equipment, and two first year students who expressed an interest in mammal ecology and who arrived in sparkly wellingtons. Ho hum.

Half an hour later and I began to wonder if we’d come to the wrong place. I’d covered quite an area of reeds compared to the others who looked as if they didn’t like getting dirty or touching real plants or animals. My only complaint was the amount of litter that was lying in the reeds: plastic bottles, crisp packets and other food wrappers, plastic bags and the remains of a Tesco trolley. Quite how that got there I didn’t dare to think, perhaps it was a holiday from its usual resting place in a canal somewhere in the midlands.

When one of the girls squealed we all rushed to her side—she’d found a dead rat. We made a note of it and as she had a smart phone included a GPS record. I was about to return to the area I’d been searching when I spotted something in the reeds not more than a few feet from where the rat was found. It was a harvest mouse nest that was in some reeds the two girls had supposedly searched.

I called them around and they all had a look at it and various photos were taken, then I snipped the reeds all around it and lifted it out and placed it carefully in a zip top plastic bag, then that went into a plastic box in my rucksack.

Once they all knew what they were looking for, seeing it for real as opposed to a photo we found three more in various stages of decay.

At three I had to leave to collect my girls but I did so in the knowledge that all five of us had had a good afternoon and plenty of fresh air.