Home: Feeding the Birds Mice – January 2010
Let’s talk about mice.
We have mice. Well we don’t exactly have mice – we have enough hobbies - it’ just that the house has acquired the mice. This is also not strictly true, in that the mice are in the outside walls of the house, and possibly constitutes more of an on the house.
Anyway before I go on any further I’ll backtrack a little. About 10 years ago, we and the ‘good’ neighbours to the left decided to do something about the appearance of our terrace houses. We wanted to insolate as well add bricks British / Dutch style to a rather dull façade.
The result was, a typical, but not for Germany, bricked house with a layer of industrial foam as insolation underneath. So that the house could breathe with the new straightjacket, it was necessary to leave at the bottom a gap of about 10cm. around the perimeter of the house. This allowed any rain water that found its way in at the top to exit; it’s also stops fungus growing and other nasty things that need a moist environment.
We also exchanged the original heating system with one with ‘state of art’. The heating bills are now 20% to 25% less, which at this rate means we will breakeven in approx. 30 years give and take a decade. So all in all a successful project – I think….
So back to the mice, due to the rather strict winter this year and the long period of snow, H started to feed on a regular basis the birds with raisins, nuts and an assortment of seeds. This not only attracted your typical winter bird population various tits, blackbirds and our resident robin but also - if we correctly recognised its colours and markings - a member of the thrush family, a fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) in German a Wacholderdrossel.
It appeared at intervals and terrorised even the blackbirds (unfortunately the picture is not very good; the mini insert underneath is from Wiki).
We have a rather large rosemary bush (see left) and underneath it is the only sheltered place which could be used as a feeding place without it being covered up by each new fall of snow. As the bush is directly in line to the living room window we have a front seat view of any comings and goings.
One morning H was standing in front of the glass door to the patio observing the various fluttering and feeding when she happened to see a mouse whiz by over the top step immediately outside the door, it was keeping to the wall of the house and in top gear.
H’s hue and cry "A Mouse! A Mouse! Get him! Her! Whatever it is!" was looked upon with scepticism on my part. Okay a mouse, what’s the problem, we live urban with a capital ‘U’. We have sheep within 'Baaah-ing' distance and smelling distance when wet, herons in regular aerial dogfights, bats who drop ‘in to’ and ‘in for’ drinks and a band of mercenary squirrels all named ‘Fritz’ [Ed: More on the Fritz's in another post].
Now stoats & Co, that would be a different kettle of invasion altogether. Anyway it could only be an isolated sighting - well I hoped it was going to be an isolated sighting - otherwise I would have to loan H my well worn panic-button.
Unfortunately, over the next few days the whizzing carried on and so I reluctantly handed over my P-button, which surprisingly she got the hang of without any training whatsoever. We began to wonder where it/they was/were turning up from and disappearing to, it’s one thing having mice on the radar but another when their home base turns out to be yours!
One morning some time later, I was sitting in the alcove with my first cuppa of the day reading the latest Pratchett, when I heard a sort of scratching in or on the outside wall next to the patio door. This was the location were H had most of the ‘sightings’!
I banged on the wall, the expected pause didn’t come.
I suspected that they were living in the space between the old and new wall! The scratching was probably daddy mouse hollowing out a nursery in the insolation material for the expecting mummy mouse. I informed H of my thoughts and findings, to which she promptly pressed the P-button.
I went off to work leaving her on watch and armed with her new Canon PowerShot Christmas present.
She made a few snaps of not just birds but a ‘whizzer’ caught in the act of helping itself to the bird food [Ed: See above right, mouse and raisins]. It looks like the regular feathered friend feeding was also the soup kitchen for the local rodent population.
Ok we now knew we had ‘B&B’ for a selected clientele, the next thing was to decide what to do about it. My idea was to carryon until the spring, the bird/mice feeding would stop and the mice would probably move off to their summer residence in the garden or further a field. H had other more drastic ideas which I may relate in another post ..
We have mice. Well we don’t exactly have mice – we have enough hobbies - it’ just that the house has acquired the mice. This is also not strictly true, in that the mice are in the outside walls of the house, and possibly constitutes more of an on the house.
Anyway before I go on any further I’ll backtrack a little. About 10 years ago, we and the ‘good’ neighbours to the left decided to do something about the appearance of our terrace houses. We wanted to insolate as well add bricks British / Dutch style to a rather dull façade.
The result was, a typical, but not for Germany, bricked house with a layer of industrial foam as insolation underneath. So that the house could breathe with the new straightjacket, it was necessary to leave at the bottom a gap of about 10cm. around the perimeter of the house. This allowed any rain water that found its way in at the top to exit; it’s also stops fungus growing and other nasty things that need a moist environment.
We also exchanged the original heating system with one with ‘state of art’. The heating bills are now 20% to 25% less, which at this rate means we will breakeven in approx. 30 years give and take a decade. So all in all a successful project – I think….
So back to the mice, due to the rather strict winter this year and the long period of snow, H started to feed on a regular basis the birds with raisins, nuts and an assortment of seeds. This not only attracted your typical winter bird population various tits, blackbirds and our resident robin but also - if we correctly recognised its colours and markings - a member of the thrush family, a fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) in German a Wacholderdrossel.
It appeared at intervals and terrorised even the blackbirds (unfortunately the picture is not very good; the mini insert underneath is from Wiki).
We have a rather large rosemary bush (see left) and underneath it is the only sheltered place which could be used as a feeding place without it being covered up by each new fall of snow. As the bush is directly in line to the living room window we have a front seat view of any comings and goings.One morning H was standing in front of the glass door to the patio observing the various fluttering and feeding when she happened to see a mouse whiz by over the top step immediately outside the door, it was keeping to the wall of the house and in top gear.
H’s hue and cry "A Mouse! A Mouse! Get him! Her! Whatever it is!" was looked upon with scepticism on my part. Okay a mouse, what’s the problem, we live urban with a capital ‘U’. We have sheep within 'Baaah-ing' distance and smelling distance when wet, herons in regular aerial dogfights, bats who drop ‘in to’ and ‘in for’ drinks and a band of mercenary squirrels all named ‘Fritz’ [Ed: More on the Fritz's in another post].
Now stoats & Co, that would be a different kettle of invasion altogether. Anyway it could only be an isolated sighting - well I hoped it was going to be an isolated sighting - otherwise I would have to loan H my well worn panic-button.
Unfortunately, over the next few days the whizzing carried on and so I reluctantly handed over my P-button, which surprisingly she got the hang of without any training whatsoever. We began to wonder where it/they was/were turning up from and disappearing to, it’s one thing having mice on the radar but another when their home base turns out to be yours!
One morning some time later, I was sitting in the alcove with my first cuppa of the day reading the latest Pratchett, when I heard a sort of scratching in or on the outside wall next to the patio door. This was the location were H had most of the ‘sightings’!
I banged on the wall, the expected pause didn’t come.I suspected that they were living in the space between the old and new wall! The scratching was probably daddy mouse hollowing out a nursery in the insolation material for the expecting mummy mouse. I informed H of my thoughts and findings, to which she promptly pressed the P-button.
I went off to work leaving her on watch and armed with her new Canon PowerShot Christmas present.
She made a few snaps of not just birds but a ‘whizzer’ caught in the act of helping itself to the bird food [Ed: See above right, mouse and raisins]. It looks like the regular feathered friend feeding was also the soup kitchen for the local rodent population.
Ok we now knew we had ‘B&B’ for a selected clientele, the next thing was to decide what to do about it. My idea was to carryon until the spring, the bird/mice feeding would stop and the mice would probably move off to their summer residence in the garden or further a field. H had other more drastic ideas which I may relate in another post ..
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