The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2938 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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I felt quite guilty in skiving off to the nature reserve, but not enough to stop me. When I arrived, Dan had the kettle boiling and I added the two cream cakes I’d acquired on the way.

“You had some excitement back at the ranch then?” he asked as we sipped our teas.

“I take it, you saw the local news?”

“Yes, pretty girl, what’s her name?”

“Debbie Matthews.”

“It could appear that gender problems are epidemic amongst biologists?”

“Why? You’re not thinking of...”

He roared with laughter, “No thanks, but at least I’d have a sympathetic boss.”

“Dunno about that, we might have to shoot the next one to try and halt the trend, or we’ll be getting Portsmouth a bad name.”

“I thought it had managed that by itself a long time ago.”

“A naval garrison town, plus the dockyard—all adds pressure on the forces of law and order.”

“Plus all these weirdos at the university...” he teased.

“Right well this weirdo from the university is here to do a quick inspection and have a wander round the woods.” He nodded and asked what I’d like to see.

I asked to see the diary and then made specific enquiries about different groups booked in—mostly schools, but also one or two others like the Brownies and a local scout troop.

The centre had also had three of our post grad students working there doing surveys. I saw their field reports, which looked quite interesting. One was looking at birds—nesting variety; another was doing a survey of mammals and the third was doing insects. On an occasional basis we sent someone to help Dan do a botanical survey—though he’s pretty good himself at identifying plants.

About Christmas time, we arranged to coppice about an acre of the woodland to measure how quickly things returned. Coppicing means cutting trees down above the roots but not to kill them. Obviously, some trees will cope better than others but this was how woodlands used to be managed from Medieval times to about the time of World War I.

According to Oliver Rackham, one of the world’s experts on the history of woodlands, the wood for coppicing or kindling was worth more than standard trees, which is the opposite of what happens now. They would coppice everything, including oak, on something like a twenty year basis and the base of the tree left behind is called a stool. Rackham suggested that some of these stools in longstanding woodlands, were up to twenty feet across, they’d been coppiced so often. The men who worked in the woods knew what they were about too, so effectively, the trees were kept in a juvenile state, regenerating from suckers—these are shoots which grow up alongside the original trunk. Some species use this as a main form of propagation, though it prevents increasing the gene pool because each sucker would have the same DNA as the parent tree. Elm trees used to spread by suckers, which might also have explained why so few seem able to survive Dutch elm disease.

It was time to don walking boots and take a look at the changes. “We’ve got some nightjar nesting, which is a new record for the area and we think we’ve got glow-worms.” Dan was effusive in his pleasure at new species already colonising the coppiced area.

“Looks like it could be suitable for grasshopper warblers too,” I suggested, their name arising from their song, which sounds like a continuous grasshopper song, think someone pinging a long comb—melodious, it ain’t.

With the extra light, there’d be loads more flowers over the next few years until the taller plants began to dominate. We were going to report on this on a monthly basis for as long as anything seemed to be happening, this would include photos, videos and written notes. Dan showed me a clip of a nightjar wing clapping, a noise the males make when flying at dusk. Their song is like stridulation so not of the melodious sort, usually being described as a churring call, which is onomatopoeic. To make life more enjoyable, we also had song thrush and wood warbler singing away as we walked around and swallows scolded us with their tetchy song.

I stopped to pick up and examine some hazel shells—I handed them to Dan. He looked at them closely. “What am I looking for?”

“To identify the animal who ate them.”

“Don’t tell me, dormouse?”

“Yes.”

“We haven’t seen any hereabouts, usually the other side of the reserve.”

“Get them to put some tubes up on those bushes,” I indicated some gorse, “and also on those birch trees. They’ll need to check them weekly.”

“Okay, anything else?”

“Yes, we need some water here, I’ll have to see about diverting the stream enough to form a pond here.”

“That would attract a few more species.”

“If we get more things to visit the area, they’ll bring predators—hang on, we’ve got sparrowhawk about, hear that call.” We stood stock still and a few moments later a female sparrowhawk flashed across the clearing. “See, just the mention of a pond, brings predators along.”

Dan laughed at my joke.

He showed me some toothwort, a virtually colourless plant that parasitizes hazel roots. In one part it was quite prolific and certainly contrasted with the bright yellow of the lesser celandines which lined the edge of the path.

As we arrived back at the visitor centre, I suggested a few more projects and that I would be getting some quotations for the work to divert some of the stream to form a pond.

I asked Dan about the job he was doing and he replied it was the best job he’d ever had because there was something different each day and at times he wondered if he was dreaming because he couldn’t believe his luck. We had another cuppa which he made as I changed my footwear back to my trainers and put my boots into a carrier bag, then added my gaiters on top.

“Are ticks becoming a problem?”

“They’re about probably courtesy of the fox hunters.”

“Eh?”

“Well before they abolished fox hunting, the bloody things used to hide on the reserve and they’d shed their ticks. They’ve been here ever since,” Dan shrugged as he spoke.

The biggest worry with them is Lyme disease which can be spread by ticks as they tend to clear their mouthparts inside the wound, though it’s more associated with deer than other mammal species.

I said my goodbyes and drove back to the university. Diane knew where I was but my phone hadn’t rung so I assumed everything was fairly okay. There’d been one or two magazines wanting interviews but that was all. Possibly, the nine days wonder was in decline—I certainly hoped so.