New Holland mouse

The New Holland mouse, Pseudomys novaehollandiae, also called the pookila, is a small rodent of the family Muridae that lives only in south-eastern Australia, in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania. George Waterhouse described it in 1843, and it then vanished from view for more than a century until it was rediscovered in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park north of Sydney in 1967. It has grey-brown fur and a dusky tail, with a body roughly 65 to 90 millimetres long, and it is easily confused with the introduced house mouse, from which it differs in having slightly larger ears and eyes, no notch on the upper incisors and no mousy odour. It is nocturnal and social, living in burrows dug in soft sand in woodland, heathland and vegetated dunes, and it feeds mainly on seeds, leaves, fungi and small invertebrates. Its populations are fragmented, and it is listed as vulnerable because of habitat loss, altered fire regimes, plant disease and predation by foxes and cats.