Hazel Dormouse
Muscardinus avellanarius
About
The hazel dormouse is 6-9cm in size, with a 6-7cm tail. It has golden-brown fur, large black eyes and a long, fluffy tail. They only come out at night when they climb high into the trees searching for food such as insects, flowers, nuts, seeds and berries. They spend almost all of their time in the branches of trees during the summer, rarely coming down to the ground.
They build nests out of grass, bark and leaves in trees or hedges where they usually have a single litter of four to five young each summer.
After feeding to almost double their weight, they hibernate during the winter months. Between October and May, they move down to ground level at the base of trees or just beneath the ground where they can avoid the winter cold. They create a tightly woven nest around the size of a tennis ball. They will curl up in this ball with their tail wrapped around their face and body to keep warm.
They can also save energy at other times of year if food is scarce, or if it is wet and cold, by dropping their body temperature and going into a state of 'torpor'. Overall they can spend nearly three-quarters of the year 'asleep' in some form! Their name is thought to derive from the French “dormir” - to sleep.
Dormice prefer the new growth of woody vegetation that arises after woodland management such as coppicing, ride widening, thinning or glade creation.
Dormouse chewed hazelnuts can be identified because the tooth-marks are at an angle to the hole, rather than outwards from its centre, so that the rim looks smooth, and there are few tooth-marks elsewhere on the nut.
Conservation status
The dormouse population is estimated to have decreased by 55% over the last twenty-five years, mostly through the loss of woodland and hedgerows, and changes to traditional countryside management practices.
Protected in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981. Priority Species under the UK Post-2010 Biodiversity Framework. Listed as a European Protected Species under Annex IV of the European Habitats Directive. Vulnerable on the UK red list, Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
Hazel Dormouse
She leaves empty bowls of hazel
behind in the undergrowth.
Oblivious to the eyes of an owl
in the dark, the swing of a saw,
or the threat of a warm December,
she experiences time like a glacier.
Tucked up round as a nut,
hidden in the blanket of her feathery
tail, she sleeps through a night
that stretches for half the year.
Waiting for spring to return
and dreaming of flowers – of the taste
of hawthorn, willow, and oak.
Length: 49 seconds
Poem: Roshni Gallagher
Read by: Roshni Gallagher
Sculpture
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