Friends of Fineshade are pretty sure there's a small number of Dormice sleeping through the winter in Fineshade Wood. In the spring they will wake up and start looking for suitable places to build their nests. But they are incredibly secretive and are very seldom seen. Which parts of the wood do they use? What sort of habitat do they like? Can anything be done to manage the wood better to help this very rare and delightful small mammal?

Recently a good new technique has been developed to monitor Dormice: - footprint tunnels. You place a tunnel in the trees with an ink pad at either end and a piece of card in between. When a Dormouse comes along to investigate the tunnel it walks through and leaves its footprints behind. Simple! The cards will be checked every 10 days through the summer and we are forming a team of volunteers for this. What we need now is to buy the tunnels and some other bits of equipment - we are hoping for about 100 tunnels. Please can you help?

You can read lots more details here Tracking Fineshade's Dormice. The project is a collaboration between Friends of Fineshade, the Wildlife Trust BCN and Forestry England.