Hedgehogs have a reputation of being creatures of habit; they supposedly develop a routine and stick to it from one night to the next. But I'm now realising that it's not as easy to second-guess hedgehogs as I had previously thought. Just when I was thinking that the hogs were no longer putting in an appearance before midnight, last night's still photo captures prove me wrong and show that the first visitor came at 8:52pm.
Below are all the night's (and the morning's) still captures presented in slide show format:
I had turned the hedgehog feeding station around so that the rain wouldn't fall into the open door and dampen the newspaper on its floor. However, at this angle it reflects badly in the infrared glare. I should have moved it to one side out of shot.
Hedgehog visits last night seem to have occurred between 00:15 and 3:45am. I wonder why they are coming so much later this last week or so? Can it all be down to the weather, or are they visiting somewhere else earlier?
There was a lot of food left over in the feeding station this morning. I think these pictures capture the only visits, and these appears to be solely by Blondie (notice the distintive markings in the final picture).
Yesterday, Friday, I was editing the previous night's hedgehog footage when my laptop - which had been giving me problems for a little while now - decided to choose that very moment to totally crash and burn. I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to ressurect it, but to no avail. I believe it is the hard disk that has malfunctioned. I just hope that there will be some way of getting the data off because I have a lot of photos on there that have not been backed up and will be lost forever if the data is irretrievable. Yes, I know I should have made back-ups, but buying a second hard-drive for back-up purposes hasn't exactly been a No.1 priority recently. (And I know I'm going to have to pay for that oversight now).
Additional to this, the other computer that I have access to has also been playing up and needs quite a few fixes of its own. I just now tried Movie Maker on this machine in an effort to re-make the aborted hedgehog movie from Thursday night, and the program simply failed on me. Rather than not show any new footage on the blog, I have uploaded straight to YouTube my favourite single video capture from that night.
I think still photographs are going to be easier until I get the laptop fixed again, and perhaps I won't be posting here quite so frequently for a short while, although you can be sure that I am going to continue feeding my spiky friends each and every night as usual.
This photo was taken just after 7:00pm tonight. The sky wasn't even fully dark. I'd just gone out to put food out for the hedgehogs and to refresh the newspaper in the feeding station and was about to lift the lid when I saw that there was a hedgehog already in residence eating the scraps from the previous night.
That's about two and half hours earlier than visits have been recently, and some nights they don't even put in an appearance until 11:30-ish or even after midnight. I'm wondering if this is a different hedgehog from the usual two visitors. It certainly isn't Blondie - I can see that from the lack of markings, but I have to confess that I don't know if the hedgehog I refer to as "the other one" is actually a single hedgehog or several.
Alternatively perhaps this hedgehog is "the other one" (or one of "the other ones") who has already been visiting and was woken by the thunderstorm we had an hour earlier and then emerged when the rain stopped; it might have thought it wise to venture out while it could.
However, this is all just conjecture. I'm hoping to capture some evidence on camera of there actually being more than two hedgehogs currently visiting the garden.
I love this photo above, with the hedgehog's reflection in the puddle of rain on the rubber mat. I don't know if the rain became harder later on in the night, but the hedgehog visits stopped soon after 2:00am which is about three hours earlier than usual. Actually, I suspect the weather may have worsened because there were a number of triggers later on but with nothing obvious in sight such as a hedgehog or a cat, so I think the rain itself may have been triggering the camera.
Below are the pick of the night's photos. By the way, the hedgehogs do use the feeding station, but I'm not including those photos because they aren't too interesting to look at.
...in fact, there was so much hedgehog activity and so many good photo captures, that the easiest way to show them all to you is in the form of a slideshow video:
...that is, Sunday night through to Monday morning. In fact, the first hedgehog didn't make an appearance until 12:50am, which is later than they have been most nights. I feel I still need to play with the camera, positioning, etc, to see if I can further reduce glare. I'm still getting infrared white-out in the centre of the photos. Any tips would be gratefully received. Such are the pitfalls of photographing a nocturnal animal. I have no such problems with the birds in the morning when daylight comes:
This blog was originally set up to make a record of hedgehog activity in my garden in South Oxfordshire, plus any other wild animals that crossed my path. However, I've since moved to Pembrokeshire in Wales. Luckily I have found hedgehogs here too, and I'm always on the look-out for other wildlife.
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