Above the sodden ground, amid pools of foot-swallowing water, hangs a feat of geometric wizardry. The harvest mouse’s nest is suspended in the high grass, barely discernible from the stalks that surround it in the scant early light.
I try to unravel what I’m seeing. The carefully constructed grasses, spun into a spherical nest, seem at odds with their placement. The nest looks like it’s been flung into the tussocks. Yet it is made from living grass – not flung into the tussocks but part of them. It is hard to look at it without losing my balance, squelching down into icy water, yet this tiny rodent – the UK’s smallest – has managed to build the nest while hanging from the grass. The agile, ginger‑furred mouse uses its dexterous prehensile tail to hold on to the stalks and crafts the leaves in an impressive stunt of aerial weaving. The result is a slender domicile, no bigger than an apple.
At this time of year, breeding nests like this one should be vacant, but some nests are built for resting as well as breeding. While many of these smaller solitary nests are also empty over winter, the exodus is not total. Amid the few here, lower down in the grass, there is still the slight chance of a featherweight inhabitant.
While broadly nocturnal, harvest mice can also be active during the day, especially in winter, and particularly so at dawn and dusk. As I pull myself upright, the nest merges once more into its surroundings. Although I am still so close, the grasses show no trace of what they hold. I scan the lower stalks. Perhaps now – it is first light – a tiny body is waking. Wrapped in the woven grass, buffered from the air’s ice, is it listening, as I am, to the sound of the pounding waves on the far shore? And, as the light grows, will it push its head out in time to see the lift of the geese in their staggered formation, off to the west, high over the cliffs?
