Rare dormice have been recorded for the first time at a Woodland Trust wood near Chelmsford in Essex. Dormice are rare, small, nocturnal and extremely shy so they are not easy to track down. Finding out where they live requires persistence and detective work to spot the clues they leave behind.

In the summer dormice build nests on low branches, using bark and leaves. These nests are abandoned in the winter when the mice find a warm place to hibernate under leaf litter on the forest floor.

Graham Hart, a local volunteer naturalist, has turned dormouse detective. Trained as a dormouse monitor, he has been looking for evidence of dormice for three years.

After a tip off from the Woodland Trust that the elusive rodent may be present in Swan and Cygnet Woods, he and other volunteers from local conservation groups placed survey ‘tubes’ around the site.

When checked later, the tubes contained empty summer nests proving that dormice were living in the wood. Using a grant from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) Graham and volunteers from the Woodland Trust put up permanent nest boxes around the wood.

Subsequent surveys have shown that the dormice are using their new homes and the wood is now one of ten in Essex being monitored for dormice.

Dormice populations have dropped over last hundred years due to changes in woodland management and reduction in hedgerows. To encourage the dormice population in Swan and Cygnet Woods, traditional woodland practises, such as coppicing and pollarding, are being brought back.

As part of the PTES Hedgerows for dormice project, new hedgerows are being planted as they form wildlife corridors that allow small animals to move safely between wooded areas.