A cheeky and posing grey squirrel

The mammals you can see in Snape Wood can be divided into visitors and residents.

The most popular residents of the reserve are grey squirrels and hedgehogs, although many people miss out on seeing the latter, as they are mainly nocturnal and extremely wary of us humans.

The harder to see residents of the wood are pipistrelle bats and woodmice – both species are known to be active as at Autumn 2008.

We also entertain three other mammals, one popular, two less so. Foxes are regular visitors to the reserve but, sadly, not resident so we rarely, if ever, get to see the cubs. It would be fantastic to host some, but the reserve is not currently very hospitable for wildlife, so one cannot blame foxes for not moving in.

The other, maybe not so popular, visitors are brown rats and house mice. Sadly, the waste that some people dump in our woods will always attract these mammals, although house mice are not quite as destructive or as disease-bearing as their bigger predatory cousins (yes, brown rats eat house mice !).

Like them or loathe them, rodents rule the mammal roost in Snape Wood Nature Reserve, but the inoffensive and very popular hedgehog and the extremely shy pipistrelle bats mean there should be mammals to suit all tastes.