Volunteers join our nibbled nut survey to find endangered dormice

Dormice are one of the endangered species living in the ancient woodlands of the Low Weald and Downs. These amazing little mammals depend on woodlands to survive, but sadly their numbers have fallen by 51% since 2000 due to habitat loss and climate change. They're now endangered, and sadly have been completely lost from 17 British counties. It's now more important than ever to protect this iconic species.

As the Hazel Dormouse increases its bodyweight to prepare for hibernation in Winter, it's in the Autumn months where we can spot signs of dormouse activity - discarded nibbled hazelnuts - but only if you know how to spot them!

Michael Blencowe, Sussex naturalist and Senior Community Development Worker for the Lost Woods project, is training volunteers in how to identify where the dormouse might be active. If we can find them, then we can work with woodland owners to protect their habitats. Michael explains more:

Ever had that feeling that the future is rapidly becoming increasingly uncertain and dangerous?  Well, for the Hazel Dormouse it’s an annual event.

The onset of colder weather each autumn signals to the dormouse that its diet of flowers, fruit, seeds, insects, and nuts will soon vanish. Each winter, instead of stashing some sustenance and struggling to survive, the Hazel Dormouse simply shuts down and sleeps. In September and October they can double in weight as they stock up on fat reserves before hard times arrive.

When they have sufficiently stuffed their cute little faces these, rotund rodents descend to a ground-floor dormitory, a tightly woven nest under moss and leaves, and become dormant.

Heart-rate and breathing reduce by over 90% and body temperature is dropped to just a few degrees above freezing. This means dormice don’t need much energy to stay alive and valuable fat reserves are burnt very slowly. Not many British mammals actually hibernate. Sure, Badgers and squirrels enter a deep sleep for longer periods but they’re not hibernating – they’re merely in ‘stand by’ mode and can reawaken quickly. Full hibernation requires a complete shutdown, pulling the power plug (almost) completely out of the wall. Of our British mammals just dormice, Hedgehogs and the bats hibernate.

One of the greatest threats to the Hazel Dormouse species is the lack of suitable habitat and destruction of their current habitat. And one of the greatest challenges to Hazel Dormice conservation is that we have limited knowledge of their populations and distribution within Sussex (as they are a nocturnal, notoriously elusive species).

The Lost Woods project has been working with the Sussex Biodiversity Records Centre to ascertain more knowledge of the dormouse’s distribution within the project's boundary.

Over the past weeks we have been engaging our Lost Woods volunteers to help us to map current Hazel Dormouse distribution within our project area. The first step in doing this is to look for signs of dormouse activity and this can be undertaken by searching for nibbled hazelnuts during the autumn. Hazel Dormice nibble hazelnuts in a distinctive way, so looking for their discarded nutshells on the woodland floor can help us to identify dormouse presence.

We’re lucky to have Lost Woods wildlife champion Chris Drake volunteering for us. Chris is very knowledgeable about Hazel Dormouse ecology and passionate about their conservation. He recently led two training sessions for volunteers in Henfield and Hassocks, teaching them about dormice habitats and how to search for those nibbled hazelnuts. Volunteers have been allocated search areas and have been busy scouring the woodland floor for signs of dormice. So if you see someone in the woods staring at the ground, that'll probably be one of our volunteers searching for nuts!

Discovering these nibbled nuts will be the first step in confirming the presence of dormice, and then if we're lucky enough to identify woods that they're active in, the Lost Woods project will work with woodland owners to conserve and create the correct habitat to ensure these amazing animals have a more certain future.

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