Anton Trexler's Image

Anton Trexler (Germany) peers up into the darkness as a dormouse pauses on a garden ladder.

Dormice were frequent nocturnal inhabitants of Anton’s garden in Wiesbaden, Germany. One night, he saw one climbing up to a grapevine using an old ladder left up for pruning - a regular route that the dormice used.

During the summer holidays, he hatched a plan to photograph the dormouse ascending the ladder against the darkness of the night. A dab of peanut butter was all that was needed to encourage this one to pause, but it took many nights of waiting before Anton finally got the perfect shot.

The tufted tail and black face markings identify this creature as a garden dormouse. Historically common across mainland Europe, over the past 30 years they’ve disappeared from as much as 50% of their former range. Exactly why remains unclear.

How you can help

• Dormice live in orchards throughout Europe, so it's important that we try to preserve these spaces.
• You can help monitor populations of the garden doormouse by joining citizen science programmes such as the Meldstelle Gratenschläfer.
• If you find a dead dormouse in the UK, send it to ZSL for a post-mortem so that they can work out why it died and monitor for any potential disease issues. In Germany, dormouse conservation is advised by BUND (Federation for Environment and Nature Conservation Germany).