Ian has put up the new owl box, kindly given to us by Cyril Cole. Cyril turned up with it one winter evenng, having made a spur of the moment offer last summer when we visited his farm at Rose Ash. We didn't think he'd remember - but Devon is like that.

So, on advice from Maggie's Dad, who is 'the owl  man' in Sussex, we've put it up facing open grass (west here), lined it with some bark, and now we'll cross our fingers and hope. Last year in our first owl box we got a lovely fluffy tawny owl chick, but what we really want is a barn owl. We know they're about.

There's plenty of small mammals for owls to eat, but we'd rather they didn't snack on the one in this well disguised nest. It's almost certainly a hibernating dormouse. We say that with confidence because after we swaled part of the reserve last year we found a lot of old

nests, and even a few occupied ones! And this one was emitting the same high pitched squeek from the same typical position - deep in the base of a tussock of purple moor grass. It seemed a bit exposed, so we piled

up some more grass on top - dormice shouldn't really get out of bed until May when there's plenty of food about.