The first black dormouse ever recorded in the UK has taken up residence in a nest box in the Blackdown Hills of Somerset.
Britain has only one native species of dormouse, the hazel dormouse. The one discovered in Somerset is a hazel dormouse but instead of having the normal golden-brown fur it is black.
A handful of black hazel dormice were found in Germany in the 1970s and two more in 2015 but it appears the Somerset specimen is a British first.
The discovery was made when staff, trainees and volunteers from the Blackdown Hills Natural Futures project were checking dormouse nest boxes as part of the national dormouse monitoring programme.
This year, the project provided 300 nest boxes and more than 60 volunteers have installed and regularly checked them. One was found to have the black specimen inside.
Conrad Barrowclough, the project officer, said: “Learning about and protecting our natural heritage is what we’re all about so finding such a rare dormouse on our doorstep is fantastic, especially at a time when Britain’s dormouse population is under threat.”
The People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), which collates national dormouse monitoring programme findings, confirmed the rarity of the find.
Ian White, the PTES dormouse officer said: “The national monitoring programme has been running for more than 25 years, with volunteers collecting data on thousands of dormice at nearly 400 sites. Not once has anyone come across a black dormouse.”
Britain’s dormice are under threat of extinction, with changes in the way farmland and woodland is managed making it harder for the creatures to survive.
Dormice need well-managed woodlands connected by hedgerows rich in fruiting plants so that they can spread and prosper. They thrived at a time when there were more hedgerows, and when hazel trees in woodlands were regularly coppiced providing plenty of nuts for food.
This black dormouse was discovered on farmland that is being managed with nature conservation in mind. The farm’s hedgerows are managed by hand using traditional techniques, bringing great diversity of wildlife, including a healthy population of dormice.
The first known recorded evidence of black dormice came in 1972 when five were found living in a small forest in a hedgerow-rich landscape in northern Germany.
It was thought to be a freak occurrence until September 2015 when a nest in a hop shrub was found about six miles away. Inside was a golden-coloured mother with four four-week old juveniles. Two were brown and two black with a white throat.
