Dormice, bats, frogs..the woods are alive!

With live music from the monthly market serenading us, a small team from the new community woodland group headed up to the woods with ecologist Matt Collis and myself, to find out about surveying for a possible hazel dormouse population.

Hazel dormice live in densities of around 1-10 dormice per hectare in comparison to wood mice who live in much larger groups of 50-100 per hectare, which makes finding them incredibly hard. Hazel woodlands are favoured but a well managed woodland is more important. Coppicing and clearing work provides light and warmth, producing areas of regeneration and diverse woodland structure, improving the overall biodiversity and number of species found. Coppicing is an important woodland management technique, providing dense ‘stools’ at the base of a tree after many years of regrowth. Hazel dormice like to nest under these stools during the winter, where they hibernate for up to 1/2 of the year, using the more constant temperature to save energy. Hazel trees are traditionally coppiced but many species can be cut back to produce a sustainable wood source, especially ash, lime and sweet chestnut. However, the benefit of the hazel tree is that it provides so many useful resources for dormice; leaves for bedding, shelter under the roots and high energy nuts at the end of summer.

The decline in hazel dormouse numbers across the UK and the rest of Europe has led to them becoming a protected species. This is due to a number of reasons but partly because woodlands are becoming increasingly fragmented making it harder for small populations to survive. By simply connecting woodlands together using species-rich hedgerows, enables dormice to quickly recolonise healthy habitats that are abundant in food and filled with potential nesting sites.

During an initial walk around the woods Matt talked about the importance of plants such as ivy, which provides late flowers and berries, essential food for bees and birds and showed us how the cracks and splits in the trees were great spots for nesting dormice and roosting bats . (Top tip - always take a torch to look for bat droppings which are small, grey, cylindrical in the cracks in trees, particularly those that go right through to the heart of the tree.)

In 1993 the first national ‘nut hunt’ was launched as a way to survey for the likely presence of dormice using the discarded nut casing from various small mammals. The hunt consists of looking in a 5m x 5m radius of a hazel coppice patch for 20 minutes to find as many eaten nuts as you can. These can then be examined to see what species has been eating them. Doing this in three different areas of a woodland provides a 95% chance of accurately detecting whether or not you have dormice in your woods.

The peak time to do the nut hunt is in August when adults and juveniles are all out feeding but we all had a go anyway and Matt searched through our treasures to see who had been nibbling the nuts. Unfortunately no dormice were discovered but we did find evidence of squirrels, wood mice, vole and weevils.

We then looked at a beautifully intricate dormouse nest made out of honeysuckle bark, leaves and moss which can be found in dormouse boxes or monitoring tubes. Monitoring tubes are a simpler and cheaper resource which are used as a preliminary measure to check for hazel dormouse populations before investing in boxes. The team put up 37 monitoring tubes around the woodland as part of a brand new survey scheme which can be checked monthly for evidence of hazel dormice. We will organise a survey session in July to train up anyone who is interested, then it’s over to you to keep monitoring.

I think everyone enjoyed the afternoon, it was lovely to spend time in the woods listening to the birds and exploring the wildlife. It’s surprising what you find when you least expect it….

Remember, if any evidence or dormice is found, let us know so that we can work with a licenced dormouse surveyor to monitor the population. Fingers crossed!