As temperatures keep dropping across Nottinghamshire, two very different pests are becoming more active for very different reasons. House mice are looking for a warm, dry place to spend the winter, and moles are pushing up fresh molehills as they chase worms deeper into the soil. Long Eaton, Sandiacre, Clifton and Ruddington each have their own reasons why one or both of these problems tend to show up this time of year.
House mice settling in around Long Eaton and Sandiacre
Long Eaton’s history as a furniture and lace-making town left it with a lot of older industrial buildings, workshop conversions and tightly packed terraces, many backing onto the Erewash Canal. Sandiacre has a similar mix, with canal-side properties and older housing near the railway line. These buildings are exactly what house mice look for once the weather turns: gaps around canal-facing airbricks, old pointing on Victorian brickwork, and the small service gaps where pipework or cabling passes through a wall.
A mouse only needs a gap about the width of a pencil to get inside, so the usual entry points are easy to miss during a normal walk around the property. The first sign is often not seeing a mouse at all, but hearing scratching in a loft or behind a kitchen cupboard in the evening, finding small dark droppings along skirting boards, or noticing a bag of pet food or bird seed in a shed that has been chewed into. Once mice establish a nest, they breed quickly, so a problem that looks small in October can be considerably bigger by Christmas.
For homes near the canal or the railway sidings in particular, blocking obvious gaps with wire wool or a proper proofing material (never expanding foam, which mice can chew straight through) and keeping bird feed and pet food in sealed containers makes a real difference. Where mice are already active, bait stations and a proper inspection of entry points get on top of it faster than shop-bought traps alone.
Molehills appearing around Clifton and Ruddington
Over in Clifton and Ruddington, the pest making itself known this autumn is more likely to be underground. Moles are active all year, but autumn brings a burst of visible molehills as earthworms move deeper into cooling soil and moles tunnel harder to follow them. Clifton’s playing fields, grass verges and gardens backing onto green space, and Ruddington’s village lawns and the open ground around Rushcliffe Country Park, all give moles the loose, worm-rich soil they prefer.
A single mole can throw up a surprising number of molehills in a short space of time, and the tunnelling underneath can undermine lawns, damage plant roots and leave uneven, dangerous ground for anyone walking across it. It is also a genuinely difficult pest to deal with without experience: mole activity is easy to misread, home-bought traps are frequently set in the wrong place because the visible molehill is not where the mole actually is, and poorly handled attempts can simply push the problem onto a neighbouring garden instead of solving it.
Why it is worth calling in a professional
Mice and moles need almost opposite approaches, which is part of why DIY solutions so often fall short on one or the other. A proper inspection identifies which entry points mice are actually using rather than guessing, and correctly reads mole tunnel systems rather than just reacting to the molehills on the surface. Rats and grey squirrels are also worth keeping an eye out for in both areas as the weather cools further; rats follow much the same shed, garage and airbrick routes as mice, while squirrels look for loft access near mature trees and green corridors.
NestBusters covers Long Eaton, Sandiacre, Clifton, Ruddington and the rest of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, with call-outs priced from £80 and ongoing inspection contracts available for business premises. If you are hearing noises in the loft, finding droppings, or watching molehills multiply on the lawn, get in touch on 0742 984 9483 or visit nottinghampest.co.uk to book an inspection.
