Genus Microtus 



Meadow mice, size small, pelade dark, l(^o's and tail sliort. 

 Distinguished from the true miee by blunt niu/zle Miid ;-;irudl ears 

 hidden in the fur. 



Fig. 4. Meadow Mouse {Microtus p. ))wdestns) . From a specimen Laken 

 at Ft. Collins. Original in Circular 18, Office of State Entomologist. M. A. 

 Palmer, Delineator. 



Colorado Species of Meadow Mice. 



Saguache Meadow Mouse, Microtus pouisylvanicus niodestus. 

 Dwarf Mouse, Microtus nanus nanus. 

 Cantankerous Mouse, Microtus mordax rnordax. 

 Hayden's Mouse, Microtus haydeni. 



Meadow-mice are found in all parts of the State. The food 

 of Meadow-mice consists of grass, garden and weed seed and eorii 

 and wheat in the shock, but very little grain is destroyed a^ grow- 

 ing time. They eat tubers of all kinds, growing or in pits. But 

 the greatest damage done by these mice is from their habit of feed- 

 ing on the bark of fruit, shade and forest trees. I am indebted to 

 Mr. A. Maxson, Entomologist for the Great Western Sugar Com- 

 pany, for the following note: ''Meadow-mice wintered in a silo 

 of seed beets. When the silo was opened in the spring, fifty miee 

 were killed and a large number escaped. The mice had destroyed 

 the crowns of ninety per cent of the beets." 



Meadow mice did considerable damage to fruit trees on the 

 western slope during the winter of 1914-15. On some of the mesas 

 in Garfield County in the spring of 1917, tliey were destroying 

 alfalfa. Meadow-mice form one of the importpnt foods of several 

 of our common hawks and owls. 



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