This fine young lady is Gertrude, she fat, fit and healthy…….so why is she with us… Well sadly for her she is totally blind and unable to cope in the wild. Luckily for her she was found wandering across roads by a kind family who scooped her up and brought her to us. She obviously lost one eye a long time ago and had only very recently lost the use of the other. She will survive very well, but not in the wild. One of our supporters has offerred her a home in a protected garden so she can live a semi wild life, safe from predators, cars and humans but where she can find all that makes a hedgehogs life heaven. She will be cared for and fed in these luxury hoggie quarters for life.

This year has been another successful year for releasing orphaned fox cubs…..

We owe a huge debt of thanks to Dawn and Barry who do so much to ensure every cub has a fantastic start to their lives in the wild..

This June saw a record number of callouts for snakes. Despite the callers worries that these snakes were adders or all sorts of exotics, they all turned out to be harmless grass snakes. Most found themselves caught in pond netting or the netting used to protect fruit and veg from birds.

Finding a three foot snake in your garden can be a tad disconcerting if you’ve never seen one up close before, but unless you are a frog, grass snakes are no threat at all…

This weekend has seen all this years orphaned fox cubs move on to release pens…. They are now starting the last part of their release programme………Here they can complete their rehabilitation, already they are now semi wild and in just a few weeks they will be fully wild and ready to take on the world as healthy young adults…………..

Every year we take in orphaned fox cubs…The vast majority are orphaned as a direct result of Man’s actions, we seem unable to co-exist with any creatures, but foxes find ‘us’ a tough prospect in every respect………. We hunt their parents, we set snares and traps for them, we poison them, we shoot them, we dig up and destroy their earths and we kill thousands on our roads every year.  Between Feb and June, every dead adult means cubs left to go hungry…. some will survive with just one parent, as long as they are able to reach a couple of months in age. Many will not….they will simply starve to death…….. These are a few of the lucky ones……

Maeve and Maisie

Magda at five weeks old

Maisie at five weeks old

This stunningly beautiful creature is ‘Cerridwen’  Very sadly she was orphaned at only five weeks old.

Otters have young at any time of the year, but this very cold snap must have made parenting especially tough. Quite what happened to mum is a mystery, but this beautiful young lady was truly fortunate to have been found by a very caring man who did everything just right. Before jumping in and rescuing her, he phoned for advice, and then expertly caught her and get her warm until our wonderful rescuers, Helen and Andy could get there to pick her up.   She is doing well and her future looks bright, she is being bottle fed 5 times a day and will eventually be released back into the wild. Otter cubs can spend 12 or 18 months with mum, learning all there is know about being an otter, and so she will be a very welcome guest for sometime……….

As a footnote…… We are extremely grateful to Darren Butterworth of Trafalgar Fisheries of Fordingbridge who has donated free of charge, enough small trout to feed Cerridwen for many weeks once she’s weaned. As a volunteer organisation with very limited funds, his generosity is greatly appreciated…Many thanks Darren………

(The photo’s Sandi and I took of Cerridwen were distinctly rubbish, and so we are extremely grateful for these superb photographs taken by Sally Adams of the Bournemouth Echo)

GREAT NEWS   The Wonderful Schelmish (probably the World’s very best Medieval Rock Band) are to play at a fundraising evening for us on    Feb 28th 2009 at 8pm

The Hamworthy Club, Magna Road, Poole.

Tickets are very limited…. if you’d love a great night out and raise money for DWR please snap your tickets up asap……..

Tickets are £12 and available from us…..    

Send a cheque made payable to S. G. Eaton,  to 

Dorset Wildlife Rescue, 25, Goldfinch Rd, Poole, Dorset, BH17 7TA

The worst of all nightmares happened last week..Our computer CRASHED……

Not the end of the world exactly, but it has caused a major crisis in the fact that our supporters records are now out of date… SO TO ALL OUR SUPPORTERS… if you have moved since Jan 07, or are a new supporter since then… PLEASE  do email your address to us at

dorsetwildliferescue@ntlworld.com so we can ensure you get the newsletters  

AND… please check with any friends/relations that you know support us to ensure we have up to date records

THANKS A MILLION     Nick

Every year we take in orphaned fox cubs and at ten to twelve weeks old they are transfered to fox release pens.  Now is the time they are given the chance to start their lives back in the wild. We owe a HUGE debt of thanks to Dawn and Barry who year after year take on the responsibility for these cubs. And every year they do a superb job and when August comes along a group of very fit and healthy yound adult foxes are given a second chance at life.. Thank you is to simpilsitic a phase, what we, and the foxes owe to Dawn and Barry is so very much more… the foxes can’t say thank you to them, but we can, and do, from the bottom of our hearts.

Tempted from the pen with food…( food is left out for a week or two, just in case )

Free at last

Helen and Andy, two of our most fantastic volunteer rescuers, have also taken on the role of foster parents to a array of bats that without exception, had been caught by cats. Helen and Andy are wonderul ambassadors for DWR and without their unstinting help, DWR would be very much the poorer.

As a footnote, they are also caring for one of our Sparrowhawks that is nearly as barmy as they are..