Dormice

Mid-Cornwall Moors span some 1650 hectares of wet and dry heaths, mires and broad-leaved woodland, between Bodmin and Indian Queens. Although the area’s on the western edge of the dormouse range in England, it’s home to several National Dormouse Monitoring Programme (NDMP) sites and several incidental records have also been reported from the area. Monitoring …

Celia Carter has been monitoring dormice in Marden Park, a large area of Woodland Trust land, on North Downs in Woldingham, Surrey since 2005. She tells us how What3Words (W3W) has made searching for dormouse boxes, and hopefully dormice, easier. Searching for dormouse nest boxes The woodland here is dense and in summer there’s quite …

Restoring Broadwater Warren Broadwater Warren – a 180ha nature reserve – was acquired by the RSPB in 2007. It’s a remnant of Waterdown Forest, a medieval hunting forest in the High Weald where, historically, the landscape would have been open heath with pockets of woodland. RSPB’s aim was to restore rare lowland heath and woodland …

Earlier this month, with the dormouse monitoring season almost over, I excitedly packed my wet weather gear and travelled to northern Germany. I was joining Björn Schulz, Sven Büchner and their families and friends to look for evidence of hazel dormice on the German/Danish border. Finding evidence of dormouse in Germany Germany, like all EU …

We were incredibly sad to hear from Sue Portsmouth that one of our long-term dormouse monitors, Karen Bigmore, passed away at her home in April. Karen has been a dedicated monitor and a well-known part of the dormouse community for years. She started monitoring dormice at Hadleigh Great Wood in Essex in 2006, training Sue …

The Blackmoor Copse Dormouse Monitoring Team made some surprising discoveries regarding the nesting material hazel dormice were using in their woodland during the hot summer of 2022. Blackmoor Copse, a 90-acre oak-over-hazel-coppice wood, is owned by Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and lies deep in south-east Wiltshire. The dormouse nest boxes – which have numbered between 90 …

We’re partnering with Wildlife Drawing to bring you an evening of art and conservation, centred around the beloved dormouse. We’ll hear from Ian White, our Dormouse Officer, who will talk about our dormouse conservation efforts, including our dormouse reintroduction programme. We’ll then get some drawing tips from artist and wildlife enthusiast Laura Cuppage. This art …

Gaining key insights into how to manage hedgerows for dormice Recently launched, the National Dormouse Footprint Tunnel Survey will use footprint tunnels to detect the presence or absence of the charismatic but rare hazel dormouse in hedgerows. The need for surveying hazel dormice is clear: it is thought that their population has halved in the …

Bountiful supplies of berries and slightly cooler days herald the start of autumn. It’s a busy time of year for dormice, hunting for ripe hazelnuts, blackberries, or the odd sloe kernel, in preparation for hibernation from October onwards. The earlier evenings mean we could be more likely to catch a glimpse of this elusive and …

Bulgaria: conference host and home to Roach’s mouse-tailed dormouse Fewer than 30 dormouse species are left in the world, the surviving remnants of what was once a widespread and numerous group of rodents. Just three subfamilies remain in sub-saharan Africa, in Europe – from Scandinavia down to Sicily – and in Asia – from southern …

‘Northern stronghold’ for rare hazel dormice created in Lancashire This week, a unique partnership of 10 organisations are coming together in an attempt to bring hazel dormice back from the brink. 39 dormice are being reintroduced into an ancient woodland in Lancashire. This reintroduction follows the milestone reintroduction in 2021 that saw 30 hazel dormice …

39 endangered hazel dormice are reintroduced into an ancient woodland in Lancashire This reintroduction follows the milestone reintroduction in 2021 that saw 30 hazel dormice (including the UK’s 1,000th) being released into a neighbouring woodland, creating a bigger and better-connected population in the Lancashire landscape Unique partnership of 10 organisations aims to bring hazel dormice …