Dormice

[GIULIA]

I wonder if any/many of you have encountered dormice on your plots and if so, did you notice what they were eating? On our allotments dormice have been spotted and we've been asked to find evidence of their little feasts. The tooth marks will apparently confirm their presence, which would be great as dormice haven't been noted here in Liverpool for years. Obviously the little darlings are all asleep right now but we were thinking of leaving hazelnut trails in late summer to inspect the husks afterwards. At the moment the theory is they've been at the cherries, poking the kernels out of the stones, according to the debris we've found where they've been seen. Is this typical dormouse behaviour? What else do they eat? If we can find the right evidence we'll get a little flag on the map at the National Dormouse Database, which would be a very fine thing indeed!

[Primrose]

You're very lucky if you've got dormice because I gather they're very rare these days. I thought I'd got one in an old nesting box on the fence behind a pyracantha hedge, because when I was pruning the hedge it peeked out of the hole to see what all the disturbance was about and unfortunately fled. It may have been an ordinary field mouse but was very tiny and when I checked the empty box later it was full of hardened dried old pyracantha berries. This was around February and probably a dormouse would still have been in hibernation then. Their ir preferred habit is hedges and woods where they feed on flower petals & nectar, rose hips, hawthorn berries, beech mast, nuts and acorns. Photos of shells nibbled by dormice here:
http://www.bottomwood.org.uk/page8.html

[Johnboy]

Hi Giulia,
I am told by the local naturalist that we have Dormice in our Hazel hedgerows because of the way certain nut cases have been chewed. I did see one some 30 years ago but only one once.
JB.