The Great Dormouse Hunt

Last weekend I attended my first proper outing with my local mammal group, to check dormouse nest boxes in woodland north of Ripon.  I was quite excited at the prospect of seeing my first dormouse up close and personal, and tempted by the tea and cakes promised at the end of the day.

It was an early start for a Sunday morning, and nearly an hour's drive to the site. I met up with the rest of the group at 9:00am and, having split up into three smaller groups, we stomped off into the woods. In all, we had 350 nest boxes to locate and check. The nestboxes were all located on a map, laid out on a grid system and marked with a length of orange tape, but nevertheless some were quite hard to find.  As there is no access to the woods, a lot of the vegetation was overgrown and it was difficult terrain to walk over.

Unfortunately, none of the groups found any dormice in the boxes, and only a few possible nests were discovered. I also looked for signs of eaten hazlenuts on the ground and didn't see any. Dormice were released in the area ten years ago and have been recorded there until recently, but it looks as though the colony has either moved on, died out, or is finding somewhere else to nest.  Some of the nestboxes contained old bird's nests; others were completely empty.  Wood mice had moved in to a number of the nestboxes, and shrews were occasionally found. We even came across a couple of bats in one of the nests.

It was nearly 2pm before we stopped for a lunch break. After this, we moved on to a second woodland to carry on the search. Unfortunately it was much the same story.  The woods were full of wonderful fungi and other life, but no dormice.

After a long day, we finished around 5pm by which time the tea-shop had closed.  So not only did we not find any dormice, but we didn't get any cake either!  Still, it was a friendly group, nice to be out in the open air all day, and a good experience - I'm now more familiar with how a dormice release programme would be carried out, and the long-term monitoring needed to follow it up.