Help. Mouse ok. Rat NO!

We have garden mice. I had a chat with them during which I told them very clearly that whilst they were garden mice I was quite happy to see them and they could help themselves to the bird food but if just one of them made any move towards the house they were all dead. Up to now they've stayed in the garden

I wouldn't worry too much about the rat yet. It may just be a visitor. If you are concerned get a humane rat trap then release it miles away.

This is why I don't feed the birds in my garden!

If you do get a pest controller in be sure to do exactly what he says. A friend of ours is one and he says the only problems he has are with people who don't do what he says and then find they still have a rat problem. They are so resistant to poisons now that it's a fine art getting rid of them.

Even though I love wild birds I'm petrified of birds flapping around indoors.
We have had starlings in our loft (we also thought mice)
one managed to get in to a down pipe cover.
it was awful listening to it scrabbling to get out.
The plaster board had to be cut to get the bird out.
Unable to get to the birds with fishing net, DH left the loft hatch off and the front door open whilst he went up in the loft to scare the birds out.
It worked but then it was race to get up the ladder to repair the mortar that the starlings had pecked out to gain entry to the attic.
Starlings usually return to the same place every year.

The joys of wildlife

They tend to put the poison in a pipe - a child or domestic pet cannot get into them, but it is just the sort of venue that appeals to a rat!

We had birds nesting in some portion of our house once - difficult actually work out how they got in. But we knocked back a fireplace (that had been boxed/bricked in several times) to the original inglenook. This left a gap between where the old ceiling ended and the house wall. We were sitting in there one day and baby birds started peeping their heads down through the gap! Very sweet!

CherryTree - your local council will have a Rat Man, or in our case "rodent operative madam". I called them a couple of years ago having seen one rat in the garden. It's free, or it was, in our area and the service was brilliant. He put poison down but in safe containers and areas because we have dogs. He returned over a few weeks, one dead rat which he took away, thankfully.
I used those squirrel busting bird feeders and we've seen no evidence of rats since then.

Cherry, sorry but I have to say that if it were mice I would be just as worried. They have filthy toilet habits and breed like the very devil if they get the chance.

Lucky we have starlings nesting in the soffits on one side of our house. They were there last year and we thought we had blocked their entry, but they're there again with a new tactic this year. They wake us up as soon as it gets light with a sort of morse code tapping which is very loud. DH bangs on the bedroom wall with his fist and they stop - for a bit. It's getting to be like a Hitchcock movie! I don't know what they are pecking at, but there is no sign of them in the loft so that's something I suppose. I can hear them moving about, and last year we could hear the chicks when they were hungry!

We get the occasional rat. I am assuming they are water rats as we have a canal at the bottom of our garden. We've only seen the occasional one and we've lived here 35 years. We only had a problem with them when my elderly neighbour was putting out bread for the pigeons and rats came to help themselves. She was told to stop doing it and there hasn't been a problem since.

We had a bird get into the cavity walls - goodness knows how! We could hear it scrabbling about for days, but there was nothing we could do short of knocking some internal walls down. It really stank after it died!

Grow plants that have berries and seeds that the birds like instead.

Thank you all will look out for the droppings
And I think we will also have to stop bird feeding
If I could be sure it was mouse (mice) I wouldn't worry.
Is there such a thing of just one rat especially as its spring ?

I'm much calmer now
you are all so matter of fact

We used to get wood mice in our last garden. Pretty little things with their white front and big ears. We also once had a rat that got into the house. We couldn't make out how, but think it could have been through a rainwater drain that ran through the garage floor. They were doing work on the main drains in the road at the time and it must have been a fugitive. I was mortified! We could hear it running about the cavities and in the end, having failed to catch it in a humane trap, we called in a pest controller who put poison down under the floor. It took a while and eventually there was a disgusting smell of decomposing rodent and DH had to go into the space under the kitchen floor and find and remove the corpse.

If you can find some droppings you will know. Mouse droppings are v small and usually come together like a little pile of chocolate vermicelli. Rat drippings are larger and cylindrical - turds as my MIL used to say. They tend to be spaced apart like a trail.

Yes, sadly the bird seed attracts mice and rats, however we have so much pleasure from seeing the birds feeding, like a little aviary at times, that we think that outweighs the risk of rats.Although if you get more than one rat you may want to stop.We only feed the birds through Winter and early Spring, and then stop it, apart from the bird baths.

Stop feeding the birds and it will go away. Unfortunately there is no way to stop the birds chucking a lot of food about and at this time of year there are hungry rats about only too keen to take advantage. If there is no food source in your garden it will move elsewhere.

Just take in the bird food - when we had rats we were told by the council exterminator that we should never put out bird food as it attracts the rats.

We had a rat in the house at one point - they are huge! It electrocuted itself by trying to chew through an electric wire.

We have mice zipping about in the garden Cherry and sometimes in the shed and loft! Last Winter we also had an enormous brown rat which often sat under the bird feeders, quite boldly staring at us in the conservatory. It vanished after a while,and hasn't been back since so must have been got by a cat or dog.
Unless you see several I wouldn't worry about it.