Mice hunter/gatherers going for my strawberries

I don't mind losing the odd strawberry to a slug, bird or mouse as I usually have a few hundred plants and damaged fruits are treats for our hens. But today I joined Mrs Scrungee in strawberry picking and noticed what she'd been missing for some time - piles of upto a dozen or so strawberries in varying stages of ripeness/decay gathered together in small heaps amongst the strawberries.

Mice are the prime suspect as slugs/blackbirds don't normally gather stuff into heaps. My problem is that mice traps now need to be made blackbird (etc) safe by enclosing in bird-proof mesh cages. Anybody got a solution to this problem? This is a few of the 'gathered' strawerries I cleared out this afternoon:

 

Nightmare Scrunge, what a waste

 

I put mouse traps inside cut off drain pipes, birds don't see them so are safe. Although I did feel sorry for a frog that got caught in one.

Perhaps you could use two flowerpots, cut the ends off and poke them together end to end with mouse trap inside.

 

Or you could go for a humane trip trap, available from your local shed. Too small for the birds to get into. Baited with peanut butter it should prove irresistable to mice.

 

'Blue corn' also needs to be covered to stop the birds from getting at it, same as with traps. Looks like I'm going to have to take my U shaped wooden tunnels I use outside the chicken run to put rat traps in up to my strawberry patch. I've also got an opaque plastic box that can go in their run with a couple of small holes in it and a mouse trap bolted inside.

 

Since I can only go by what you type, I have to mention that you want to use mouse traps, not rat traps, as a mouse is too small to trip a rat trap.



Rat trap on the left, mouse trap on the right.

 

I've got loads of both types (plus a Fenn trap from when we had a stoat problem).