PotM Calendar
The Photo of the Month (see gallery) is a year-round calendar of wildlife and nature images with story contributions from visitors, friends and fellow photographers.
When it comes to nature photography, it's not only those exciting tales of high adventure that often accompany talent and skill for a fabulous result. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a well-timed shot or well-framed one can say as much about you as a photographer. So, if you'd like to showcase one of your pictures here, free, for one calendar month with a bio or personal account, then this page is for you.
Brigstock, Kettering
Mice are a highly successful species, thriving in many habitats worldwide, thanks to their adaptability and high reproductive rates. Something that can’t be said of Britain’s harvest mice as intensified agricultural practices and changes in land use continue to drive their numbers down.
Once a prolific pest throughout cornfields in Southern England as far as North Wales, they’re now mainly confined to the verges and hedges of motorways. As the UK’s smallest rodent and the only British mammal with a prehensile tail, these agile expert climbers are well-equipped to tackle the leafy, fruity seed parts of stalks, grasses, and reeds with impressive dexterity, barely bowing the most flexible of stems with a body weight of six grams or less. Yet contrary to the climbing life depicted in countless tame images of them on various flowers, branches, stalks and stems, harvest mice, like most mice, live on the ground or in holes beneath it.
Although more adventurous in daylight during their August breeding season, they’re highly active at night, yet no less preyed upon by foxes, owls and mustelids. However, being only six centimetres long, they’re also subject to the predations of snakes, corvids, hawks, hedgehogs, rats, and even toads! Hence, as a mere morsel on so many menus, they’re far safer nesting, feeding and foraging above ground. A key survival strategy that’s left them clinging to the dwindling prospects of threatened farmland habitats like hedgerows, meadows, and reedbeds more so than any other species of British mouse.
Special announcements or simple hellos. Place your message or link here as part of your PotM agreement. With one place left for 2025, the PotM Calendar is closed until November 17th. To learn more about posting news, comments and events under a PotM agreement, please visit our Terms of Use page, where you can submit your photo (along with your story) during the last two weeks of every month.
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