QUIRKY WORLD ... A mice surprise - village home to rare rodents

ENGLAND: Rare harvest mice have been rediscovered in the village where the species was first identified, after work by farmers and volunteers to help wildlife.

More than 150 nests of the tiny mammal, immortalised by Beatrix Potter, have been found around the village of Selborne, Hampshire, where it has been thought to be locally extinct for more than 25 years.

Its return to the village, birthplace of famous naturalist Gilbert White who first distinguished the harvest mouse, micromys minutus, as a species in 1767, comes after work by a “farmer cluster” to manage the landscape for wildlife.