30 Days Wild - Day 6: Can we handle it?

So what did we drive 9 hours across the country for yesterday?

Dormice of course!

We spent today on a "dormouse handling and survey techniques" course at Wildwood in Kent.

They have a fantastic collection of native animals and have captive breeding programs for several of them including the hazel dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius). This gives the perfect opportunity for trainees to practice dormouse handling techniques, especially us northerners who are beyond the present natural range of this endangered woodland rodent.

We've done plenty of nut searches and nest tube surveys for this species as part of our work in the past but have only actually seen a handful of dormice (and not all at once!), so we hoped to get some new skills and refresh some of our old ones.

Our tutor for the day was Hazel Ryan, Senior Conservation Officer at Wildwood, who took us through the classroom theory in the morning followed by a whole afternoon in the dormouse pens where we practiced safely checking boxes, removing, handling, sexing, weighing and returning dormice.

Into the bag and ready to be weighed. It is actually awake - it just decided to blink for the photo!

What amazing animals and a really interesting day. We hope to get to grips with this species more often in the future!