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Last autumn an 18-cm diameter spruce log had ended up in Luua Forestry School’s woodpile of firelogs. In the log the workers discovered somebody’s food store. The hollow, 9 centimetres in diameter, was filled to a height of 70 centimetres with hazelnuts and acorns. In the autumn the owner-animal had gathered nearly 4,5 litres of acorns and nuts. One side has been cut open with a saw to show the stack of food. This kind of food stockpiles for the winter, in tree hollows and in nest boxes, are mostly collected by squirrels and the yellow-necked field mouse, Apodemus flavocillis.

 

Some twenty years ago, in early spring when I was inspecting nesting boxes in the village of Tõrve, I came upon a food store with a field mouse hiding in it. The nesting box, meant for tits, was mounted in a tree growing about 5 metres  from the edge of the field. The box was filled with barley ears, and some of the grain was not yet eaten. To carry the ears of grain from the field to the wood, climb about 1,5 metres up a smooth alder trunk and then crawl into the box by way of the entrance opening, with the ear of grain in the mouth, showed great determination that had paid off – the field mouse had survived the winter nicely. That nesting box was left as it was until the departure of the mouse in May.