Share

The tale of a wood mouse in Little Monkwood

Wood mouse by Bob Knight

Whilst on the look out for dormice, Catharine encountered another small furry friend...

I may no longer be a trainee, having moved onto a role with Worcestershire Wildlife Consultancy, but I recently joined the current conservation trainees at Little Monkwood, a section of Monkwood nature reserve, as part of my training to be a licensed dormouse handler. In preparation for next year's breeding season, we were checking, cleaning and repairing nest boxes under dormouse expert Andy Bucklitch’s supervision. The repaired boxes will be put back out in the wood in time for the dormice to find them as they come out of their hibernation in the spring.

You never quite know what you are going to find when you’ve placed your bung in the back of a box and tentatively slid the lid open. As expected at this time of year, any dormice in the wood were all probably now in their hibernation nests, safely tucked up for the winter. Dormice snuggle up for winter at ground level, which is one of the reasons it's important to stick to paths and keep your dog on a lead at all times of year.

Wood mouse crawling up a tree trunk

Wood mouse by Catharine Jarvis

A couple of the nest boxes had old blue tit nests in them. In another, we spotted an intricate paper-like hornet nest. As Anna and I approached one nest box, a wood mouse shot out before we could get our bung in the hole and it scampered half way up the tree trunk. It sat there for a while before climbing higher and into a fork in the trunk, where it sat until we inspected the nest box.

Wood mouse nest

Wood mouse nest by Catharine Jarvis

Unlike dormice, wood mice have an altogether different strategy for getting through the winter months. They don’t hibernate over the winter, instead they spend their autumn stockpiling nuts and berries, known as a cache. I smiled to myself when I opened the box fully to find a jumble of brown oak leaves with a stash of half-eaten, mouldy acorns underneath. I felt down to the base of the box and it was quite mushy and, after getting a bit closer, there was a strong whiff of urine too; all tell-tale signs of a wood mouse nest.

If it had been a dormice nest, it would have been an intricately woven structure with honeysuckle and hazel leaves, with a little entrance hole to match the round entrance hole in the back of the nest box.

We left the wood mouse up in the branches of the tree whilst we cleaned out the box and then headed back to base at Lower Smite Farm.

Catharine gained her knowledge and conservation skills as a conservation trainee at the Trust. On completion of her traineeship, she started her new role of Assitant Consultant Ecologist with Worcestershire Wildlife Consultancy.

Related blog posts