Welcome to the Grass Snake Hotel

With any conservation project the amount of work that can be completed is directly proportional to the hard work and dedication of the volunteers. The building of one Snake Hibernacula was ambitious to build two was going to be difficult but achievable. Therefore in planning what work was needed to be done, two days were allocated to this project.

One of the greatest difficulties was always likely to be that the ground where the pits needed to be dug. As this is a woodland area, that meant digging through tree roots, and anyone who has done any gardening near trees, will know, this is never easy. However, we are blessed with a light sandy soil down by the river, therefore digging would not be as bad as it could be. Thus a balance was there and fortunately on the day the unseasonably good weather held up making the work easier to carry out. While it was still hard work as more than one tonne of soil had to be dug out of each pit, the pits were quickly created.

The pits are made two meters by two meters and about forty centimetres deep, with a slope to wards the south. That way they can drain and will stop them becoming frost pockets. These pits are then filled with logs that are at least twenty centimetres across and laid crossways on two layers. This creates an area of air that is warmer than the ambient air temperature, and even if this log filled pit becomes water logged, that water will not lead to the air within the hibernacula freezing, therefore not harming or killing the snakes inside.



Those logs bring the pit back up to the ground level; at this point the actual accommodation is constructed. This is made up of smaller branches, from ten centimetres down to twigs, stacked so they are in an east west orientation. The orientation again is important so that at sunrise in particular, and less so at sunset, the sun warms the branches at the entrances so that the air temperature is kept higher than the ambient air temperature and frost-free. This stack is built up so that its about eighty centimetres from the ground. All the spaces in this pile are there so that the snakes can find cosy places to sleep out the winter free from predation or disturbance.




Then an insulation layer is put on the logs. While turf would be ideal, as Chopwell wood doesn’t have great swathes of grass anywhere, we used bracken something we do have lots of. Often it is a matter of making minor adjustments and using the materials available, rather than not doing something because you don’t have what’s ideal. Therefore with the logs insulated the soil from the pits is used to cover the hibernacula, leaving the East and West sides open.



The volunteers worked their socks off, and two hibernaculums were completed in a day rather than the two days expected. Friends of Chopwell Wood, and the Durham Biodiversity Action, were really lucky to have had such hardworking and dedicated volunteers. Thanks folks, and I am sure that the Grass snakes will send their thanks too.

All we need to do now is find the tenants!
So to all you grass snakes out there, free accommodation.
(We don’t mind if the Grass Snakes are Squatters either)
Beautiful Location