“Trapping small mammals is quite a bit like fishing,” says Mike Schrad, bending down to select up a small, steel field tucked beneath the grass. “Some days you catch quite a bit, and a few days you don’t catch something.”
We’re standing in a patch of remnant sandhill prairie, and the morning dew is seeping via my climbing boots as I comply with Schrad from one entice to the subsequent. He can inform if we’ve caught one thing with out even opening the entice, judging by the burden and the texture of frantic little ft scurrying inside.
“This one’s empty,” he says, flakes of oatmeal flying as he snaps the entrance closed.
“And this one.”
And one other.
I’m beginning to see what he means about fishing, when Schrad stops forward of me at a entice. “We’ve bought one thing.” He picks the field up, and in a single swift movement, flips the entice door open and suggestions one thing tiny, brown, and furry into the mouth of a plastic ziploc bag.
It’s a plains pocket mouse.
Schrad, a Nebraska Grasp Naturalist and long-time volunteer, is right here at The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies protect as a part of a long-running analysis venture to know how populations of small mammals are impacted by grassland administration.
Optimistically, the tiny, wiggly mouse we’ve simply caught would possibly inform us one thing about TNC’s efforts to revive Nebraska’s native prairie.
Pocket Mice on the Prairie
The Platte River Prairies protect kinds a sequence of protected grasslands and wetlands alongside the Platte River because it flows eastward via south-central Nebraska. Since 1988, TNC has restored 1,500 acres of cropland to re-connect fragments of remnant prairie.
The sector we’re standing on this morning is a small patch of remnant sandhill prairie. Our boots crunch via grasses — needle-and-thread, little bluestem, sand lovegrass — as we stroll throughout the sector. Only a few hundred ft away is Schrad’s second trapping website. To my untrained eye it appears to be like an identical to the sector we’re standing in, however protect supervisor Cody Miller tells us that it was a cornfield years in the past.
Prairies want each hearth and grazing to flourish, and a lot of Miller’s work focuses on managing the protect via a mixture of prescribed burns and cattle grazing. (Elsewhere within the area, TNC is restoring bison to their historic position as plains grazers.)
Schrad’s been volunteering his time to entice on the protect since 2013. He returns right here thrice a yr — spring, summer time and fall — to seize small mammals as a part of a long-term examine to check how various kinds of grassland administration have an effect on native species, together with the little pocket mouse wiggling in his fingers.
Schrad deploys the traps at sundown — 40 within the remnant prairie and 40 within the restored — after which returns at daybreak to examine them. “It’s a little bit of a problem after they graze this space and we entice on the similar time,” he says, “as a result of the cows like to bounce on my traps.”
“It’s a little bit of a problem after they graze this space and we entice on the similar time, as a result of the cows like to bounce on my traps.”
Mike Schrad
The little pocket mouse crouches calmly within the plastic bag, its cheeks stuffed stuffed with oatmeal and birdseed that Schrad makes use of as bait. It’s experiencing what quantities to an alien abduction, however not less than it should scurry away with a meal.
“Be sure you get the old style oatmeal, not the moment oatmeal,” instructs Schrad, as he gently coaxes the mouse to the nook of the bag. “The moment oatmeal will get moist with dew and turns into mush.” The plastic bag could be very low-tech, but it surely lets Schrad deal with mammals safely whereas he information knowledge, inducing the animal’s weight, age, intercourse, and placement of seize. (In a pinch, a takeaway espresso cup works, too.)
This primary catch of the day is a plains pocket mouse, one of many species that Schrad and Miller are particularly serious about.
Pint-sized and lovable, this seed-eating species is determined by native grasslands. It’s named not for its measurement, however for the 2 exterior cheek pouches that it makes use of to retailer meals. Schrad explains that different rodents cache meals inside their mouths, in between their enamel and cheek. However pocket mice have a totally exterior pocket on every cheek, like a tiny kangaroo pouch.
“That is the western subspecies… that little ear spot is attribute, and also you see the brownish band alongside the perimeters,” he provides. “And this examine space proper right here, that is the most typical species out right here.”
After simply two minutes Schrad is completed, and it’s time to let the mouse scurry again to its burrow. Releasing it is so simple as resting the open bag on the grass. After a second or two, the mouse is away, disappearing proper beneath our ft.
We stroll on, cautious to not step anyplace close to the place we final noticed the mouse. It’s on to the subsequent entice, dickcissels and grasshopper sparrows calling within the background as we crunch via the grass.
For Small Mammals, It’s All About Construction
Plains pocket mice aren’t the one species that flip up in Schrad’s traps. Generally catches finds grasshopper mice, who’re particularly wiggly. “They’ve a behavior of marking their territory by chirping, similar to a hen,” he says.
What he catches typically comes all the way down to the kind of habitat he’s trapping in. Western harvest mice typically flip up, he says, though they have a tendency to love taller grasses and typically construct their nests elevated from the bottom. One other species that Schrad has but to catch is a kangaroo rat, which is far bigger than the pocket mice and has massive hind ft tailored for hopping. “However to hop round in heavy cowl like that is troublesome… they want clear area, some naked floor.”
When Schrad appears to be like at a grassland, he’s not serious about particular person plant species however in regards to the construction of the habitat. What % of the bottom is roofed? How a lot of it’s grass, versus leafy forbs? “These variations in construction are so necessary to small mammals,” he says. And variations in construction typically come all the way down to various kinds of administration.
Miller has the subsequent entice in hand by the point we catch as much as him. “We’ve bought one thing,” he says, as he opens the door and suggestions the entice over. Solely the mammal that plonks down into the plastic bag isn’t a plains pocket mouse. It’s a mass of squirming stripes and spots, and everybody yells in shock as Schrad laughs.
“It’s a thirteen-lined floor squirrel,” Schrad says, a species that’s significantly bigger than a pocket mouse. And feisty. And might nip your fingers via the bag.
Schrad says they’re an uncommon catch, as a result of thirteen-lined floor squirrels are diurnal. It doubtless wandered into the entice shortly after he set it yesterday night.
After releasing the bottom squirrel, we end checking all 40 traps, closing every of them as we go to keep away from catching any wildlife in the course of the warmth of the day. Schrad will likely be again later this night to open and bait them once more, for his second night time of trapping.
Our catch for the morning — three pocket mice and a floor squirrel — is an efficient rely for spring, which tends to have a decrease catch price than different occasions of yr. It’s far fewer animals than I anticipated, one thing Schrad notes is typical of small mammal research.
“Getting nothing there may be pretty widespread,” he says, “That’s why small mammal research take so lengthy. You need to exit, throw a whole lot of traps down, and maintain at it for years. Actually.” He notes an analogous examine in Kansas that’s been working for 3 many years.
The opposite problem for some of these research is discovering areas which you can return to yr after yr, he says, and that’s why preserves like Platte River Prairies are so necessary. Cornfields, restored prairie, and relics of native prairie, all inside arm’s attain.
“Having relics like Platte River Prairies gives a pocket of variety,” Schrad says. “It’s a jewel, it truly is.”
And the little mammals scurrying amongst these grasses might sound inconsequential, however, as Schrad says: “You by no means know what one species goes so as to add to mankind.”
And also you by no means know what one pocket mouse can inform us about managing prairies.
