Hazel dormice need help for numbers to rise, says Wendy Tobitt of BBOWT

Ridiculed by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland for being sleepy, the dormouse, or hazel dormouse to give its correct name, has all but disappeared from Oxfordshire’s woodlands.

Last summer a few were recorded by BBOWT in special nest boxes put up for them on Chinnor Hill nature reserve, but this year’s surveys, carried out last month, drew a blank. Such erratic behaviour is one of the mysteries of this nocturnal animal, which is why BBOWT and the Oxfordshire Mammal Group are calling on people to go on a nut hunt in their local woods to find signs that hazel dormice are alive and well, and preparing for hibernation.

The hazel dormouse is tiny. A fully-grown adult animal curls up neatly inside the palm of an average-sized hand, and the chances of anyone seeing them are very slim indeed. During the spring and summer evenings and nights they scamper along branches and up and down tree trunks foraging for food, which is likely to include flowers, nectar from honeysuckle and insects.Video footage recorded by researchers on the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme shows the animals using their long whiskers to position their feet on narrow branches, and feel their way through gaps between leaves and twigs as they move among the trees in the darkness.

In October the hazel dormouse is busy feeding up on hazelnuts and other protein-rich foods to sustain it through the next six months of hibernation, when it will curl up into a tiny ball among a dense nest of leaves and moss at the foot of trees and hedgerows.

One Oxfordshire site where hazel dormice have been recorded recently is Warburg Nature Reserve, near Nettlebed, so why not go on a woodland walk there this weekend with our guide to your nut hunt?

On the ground near hazel trees and among coppiced woodland look for discarded hazelnut shells that reveal vital clues. To get at the tasty kernel inside, the hazel dormouse gnaws a distinctively smooth, round hole in the shell.

A wood mouse, in comparison, will give the shell a thorough chew leaving many tiny tooth-marks, while a jagged hole with very few tooth-marks on the nut’s surface suggests a bank vole has gnawed its way into the hazelnut.

Hazel dormice are in need of our help if their numbers are to increase in our county again, says Judith Hartley of the Oxfordshire Mammal Group. “Next year we are running a dormouse conservation project, and we will need help from anyone who is interested in finding out more about this fascinating animal.”

Dormice are not the only mammals that the group is following, says Judith.

“We’re keen for everyone to have a better understanding of the threats facing our fellow mammals, and so we’ve planned a series of monthly evening lectures at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History focusing on familiar as well as unusual animals.”

Patrick Barkham, renowned wildlife writer, author of Badgerlands: The Twilight World of Britain’s Most Enigmatic Animal will give the inaugural lecture on Monday, October 13, at 7pm.

Patrick’s talk will be about ‘Badgers and People: a thousand years of love and hate’ a topical subject given that the badger cull is still going on in parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset, and more conservation organisations, including BBOWT, are vaccinating badgers against bovine TB.

Future lectures will cover water voles, polecats, hedgehogs, hares and the relationship between domestic cats and garden wildlife.

For full details of the lecture series, including how to book, see www.oxonmammals.org.uk