"Steve Harris" wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Alan Holmes) wrote:

They do hibernate

Around here, they can be seen most weeks during Winter. My reading
suggests that they may well stay in during really cold weather. Sleeping
for months on end is definitely not their thing.

All I can say is, that up until about last year we were plaqued with the
damned things, I was catching at least one a day, then the winter set
in and it was quite mild, the next year, between three of us we only
caught three!

The conclusion I came to was that the mild winter had caused most
of them to die.

This year we have only caught two 'local' ones, fresh ones are appearing
from a different direction, looking for fresh fields, so we have to assume
that all the 'local' ones have died, mainly because of the mild winter.

Alan
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