Calm down: we did not find any dormice. Or dormouses as I would prefer to call them.
It was an odd day as I got lost twice and had the unnerving experience of feeling disorganised and late. Still, it didn't really matter and it didn't seem to impact me much.
The course was great. In the morning, which was in a class room, Henry went through details of the life, diet and biology of the dormouse - specifically the hazel dormouse. They are very small and are arborial, feeding in the canopies of trees in early summer and then gradually moving down as the year progresses. They eat pollen and nectar (flowers), insects, nuts and seeds. Oak, hazel, bramble and honeysuckle seem very important for them but they'll also eat any fruit or seeds (hips and haws, sycamore and ash seeds and so on).
The weave rather elaborate spherical nests out of predominantly honeysuckle bark in which to have their babies. And in winter, they make a little scrape in the ground to hibernate. They really are the cutest things when rolled up into a sleeping ball.
He told us how to age a dormouse and how to tell if a nut had been eaten by a dormouse as opposed to a bank vole, wood mouse or squirrel.
And there were more details about periods of torpor and habitat (they like coppices on a long rotation - I so want to be a coppicer).
One of the most unnerving facts was that dormouse tails - the skin and fur - will come off if they are gripped. It's an anti-predation mechanism. The vertebrae are left and eventually fall off. Clearly, you must be careful if you hold one.
After a coffee break, Henry went into details of the dormouse reintroduction strategy (he was involved from the start) and how to monitor dormouses. He explained about nest boxes - he designed one as the original boxes were too often taken by birds, wasps and other small mammals. His box lessens the use by other animals. There are also tubes used to see if dormouses are present - either because they nest in them or leave footprints after walking on inkpads. He explained the pros, cons and limitations of all the methods and went through the history of the reintroduction at Brampton Wood.
In the afternoon, we went to the wood and checked some boxes, examined some nuts (all eaten by bank voles or squizzels) and saw a pair of wood mice who had taken up residence in a box. They were sexed (both male), aged (both juvenile) and weighed (18 somethings and 15.5 somethings). They were then released hack in the box.


The wood is wonderful. And of course there is a decent amount of coppicing work done there. It is, he said, very labour intensive, and none of the products are used. I was looking at the hazel and thinking, I'm SURE we could make albeit imperfect screens out of this.
Henry is incredibly knowledgeable and was very patient with the questions. An inspiring teacher - not, interestingly, because he expresses passion, but because his actions seem to suggest the underlying passion. Interesting.
Suzy, whom I know from work parties, was there. She has done some monitoring with Henry and seems to volunteer almost three days a week but not in the organised way I am doing. She said she wanted the freedom to do what she wanted to do, rather than having to do what someone wanted her to. She is not looking for a new career - but already has qualified as a starter bird ringer. The Wildlife Trust paid for her to get a brushcutter license and she has learned a great deal from doing transects and from going out with people like Henry. That made me think, too.
I do not think I want to ring birds. I could do dormouse and bat monitoring if I were not already so committed. But I'd like to manage a coppiced woodland. With all the creatures that would benefit. I'd like to manage a coppice with monitoring for many species every year to see what changed from, say, overgrown coppice to well-managed coppice.
That's what I'd like.
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