We sampled wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) on 12 occasions through May-December 2008 at Cotgrave Forest (+52.891, 21.041242) a ,135 ha area of coniferous and mixed forestry plantation in Nottinghamshire, UK (total n = 141). Mice were caught by overnight live-trapping using Longworth traps. The traps were placed at permanently marked stations located at 20 m intervals (1 trap/station) along a 1600 m curvilinear transect that traced the margins of contiguous forestry blocks. These blocks were separated along their edges by narrow clear areas ,10-40 m wide. The use of an extended trapping line was intended to distribute trapping effort over a very large area and avoid local demographic effects. Traps were set in the afternoon (16.00 h BST) and collected the following morning (08.00 h) throughout the study period. Females that were lactating or heavily pregnant at the time of capture were released. At the last two sampling points, where numbers of mice captured exceeded the capacity to process them, some randomly selected individuals were also released. Other individuals were processed and infection variables quantified as previously described [18] . This was with the exception that in the present study lice were recorded in different infection categories (absent, ,50 egg cases present, $50 egg cases present). Additionally, in the present study, thin blood smears were prepared from cardiac blood and examined for the presence of Bartonella spp. and Babesia microti (counts of infected cells in one hundred 1006 microscope fields). Eyes from each specimen were stored in 4% formalin and then lenses were removed and dried in an oven at 80uC for 72 h and weighed for use as an index of age (combined weight, g) [19] . In the present study the same set of macroparasites was found as in a previous study along the same transect in 2007 [18] , with the exception that Heterakis spumosa was absent.