72 WOODLAND CREATURES 



and the kestrel has no objection to including a 

 dormouse in its fare. 



The long-tailed field mouse is, I suspect, guilty 

 of bullying the more easygoing dormouse, for 

 I have so often found the field mice occupying 

 the nests of the latter, that I am sure they turn 

 out the rightful owners. On one occasion I 

 pushed my finger into a nest, only to receive 

 a sharp prick on the end. I hurriedly with- 

 drew it, thinking I had run it against a thorn, 

 when out jumped a fine long-tailed mouse. 1 It 

 was his teeth, not a thorn, that my finger had 

 met ! Another time, when out with a shooting 

 party, I saw a long-tail, startled by the thump 

 of a beater's stick on the bush, jump headlong 

 from a dormouse's nest, miss its footing on a brier 

 stem, slip, and get caught by a thorn through 

 the skin of its tail. For several moments it hung 

 helplessly, and I quite expected the tail to skin, 

 as so easily happens with these mice, but after a 

 few kicks it swung free and ran off. I could 

 give scores of similar instances of long-tailed 

 field mice taking possession of such nests, and 

 will only say it is the rule and not the exception 

 for them to do so. 



Apart from natural foes, and other causes, the 

 life of individual dormice is probably short. 

 Those I have kept, and which I have tried to 

 supply with everything they could possibly want, 



1 The common Long-Tail, Apodemus sylvaticus, not the Yellow- 

 neck, A . flavicollis ; though the latter is plentiful in the district in 

 question. 



