Been Dormousing

Today was the first opportunity to go dormousing again that I've had for ages, they're frequently during the week and I'm working. I left home just after 8.00am and drove to the meeting place near Cheddar - yep the place where the cheese comes from, and the famous gorge, plus of course the caves, which were occupied thousands of years ago. Modern archaeologists suggest that some human skulls show our ancestors were cannibals, and that their brains were cooked inside the skull. Thankfully, as far as I know they've stopped doing it now, they just leave litter instead.

The area is protected by a deer fence, to keep them out, and predatory humans. It's on a hillside and is woodland which has grown on an old quarry with landfill. It's quite hard walking in places and had me puffing and panting.

First we checked nest boxes and if we saw nesting material, we stuffed the entrance hole with leaves, then when we'd surveyed a couple of rows, maybe twenty or so boxes, we went back and checked the suspect boxes. A few had abandoned dormouse nests in them, and others had dormice.

We had two boxes with babies in them, and can they move when disturbed? Fortunately, the way we do it means that none of the babies were lost and they were going to be removed to captive rearing over the winter, which would protect both mother and her babies. The babies were only 8gm and couldn't possibly develop enough fat to survive the winter, and in feeding them, the mother might not produce enough fat to survive either. Those which survive will be released next spring near the box from which they were taken.

I got to handle three adults and a couple of babies - they are really tiny and difficult to grab and hold for weighing. It was hard work up and down the hill, but it's really enjoyable and of course it's basically research for Bike, to give authenticity to Cathy's work.

We'd also set some Longworth traps, which are live trapping devices, to see what else was about. We only caught one field vole. Longworths are very fiddly things to set and bait.

Because we ran late, I nipped up the road to a small cafe and had a late breakfast at about 2.00pm then drove the two hours back home. Given the torrential rain we had all day yesterday, it stayed fine and wasn't too bad underfoot.

Angharad