Pest Control in Watlington

Watlington is a small market town tucked beneath the Chiltern escarpment in south Oxfordshire, with the chalk hills rising steeply to the east and open farmland stretching west across the flat vale. The town centre is a compact grid of streets around the Town Hall, with brick and flint buildings typical of the Chilterns. These older properties have walls where the mortar between the bricks and flints wears away over time and mice find every gap. The flint construction is particularly prone to developing tiny openings because the irregular stone shapes leave small voids that only need the slightest disturbance to become entry points for a determined mouse.

The flat farmland to the west of Watlington supports arable farming and the fields come right up to the edge of the town. Rats and field mice from these fields move into the gardens and outbuildings of properties on the western edge of town after harvest when the crops are cleared and cover is removed. The ditches and small streams that drain the vale also provide corridors for rats to travel between the farmland and the built-up area. The allotments and garden boundaries on the edges of Watlington are often the first places where rat activity is spotted as the animals make their way toward the houses.

The Chiltern beechwoods above the town support grey squirrels that come down into gardens and occasionally into loft spaces and the chalk grassland on the escarpment is home to field mice and voles that move into houses when the cold weather arrives. Wasp nests turn up in the older buildings through summer, with the south-facing walls that catch the afternoon sun being favourite spots for queen wasps to start building. The White Mark on the hillside above Watlington is a landmark and the slopes around it are full of the kind of wildlife that can sometimes cause problems for the homes at the foot of the hill.