Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

"It's not unusual to find a male and female curled up together in a state of torpor - it's very endearing," said Simone Bullion in a woodland in south Suffolk. The precise location isn't being divulged because the dormouse is an endangered species - the only rodent which hibernates in the UK to avoid winter food shortages.

Simone, who works for the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, is co-ordinating a project which is aiming to find out more about the creatures. The woodland has 93 nest boxes which are fixed onto trees about five feet up the trunks.

The dormice use them for hibernation and in late Spring/early Summer they start to wake up from their winter slumbers. They're still quite dozy and are curled up in balls.

The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's Richard Daniel with a nestbox

In May 2009, Trust volunteers only found three nest boxes with dormice in, which is not good news as far as Simone is concerned: "I think that's a little bit low.

"Sometimes it's quite hard to tell at this time of year. We're going to do another June check. The animals may not be in the boxes yet - so numbers may pick up.

"But if the numbers remain low, then I am concerned because that means there hasn't been good winter survival and we know last year wasn't good for breeding because it was such a bad summer."

A new haircut

When the dormice are found the team takes a small hair clipping of the longer 'guard' hairs so they get a DNA record. This leaves a 'mark' of exposed underfur, darker hairs which the team can note the position of on the body as another means of identification. The 'mark' disappears when the dormouse moults in the autumn.

They then hope to be able to track the male and female breeding habits including exactly when the dormouse female gives birth. The data is then collected nationally at the Dormouse National Monitoring Programme which is administered by the People's Trust for Endangered Species.

There are around 20 sites in Suffolk where dormice are found and numbers can reach 20 at each site. As they're not all monitored at once, there are no figures telling us how many dormice we have in the county.

The dormouse's diet changes throughout the year. In the spring it's pollen and nectar from flowers such as bramble and honeysuckle. In the summer they eat insects such as aphids, while in the autumn it's nuts and berries, such as hazelnuts, blackberries, sloes.

They can live for 5 years or more, but they have a low reproductive rate with only 1 or 2 litters of approximately 4 babies each year. They are highly arboreal and don't like coming down from the trees to the ground during their active phase (April-October) but they do hibernate on the ground.

Because they don't like crossing open ground this makes them extremely vulnerable to the effects of habitat fragmentation, such as if their woodland is isolated from other hedgerows or woodlands.

Simone Bullion has also written a book called The Mammals Of Suffolk. It's on sale at the Suffolk Wildlife Trust and profits are divided between her employer and the Suffolk Naturalists' Society.