In the early hours of Monday morning, Elsa got into a very silly mood and was bombing in and out of the cat flap. I went outside for a look and saw this little hog watching us. I saw also that the food bowls needed replenishing, so filled them up with mealworms. The hedgehog was quite keen to get to the food and didn't seem to mind me being there nor Elsa dashing around like a mad thing.
Last night was quite busy again, with often two and occasionally three hogs visiting at the same time. I'm including ALL the night's still captures in slideshow format below:Look out for a cameo from Elsa!
I had only a handful of photo captures last night, just 14 in total, whereas recently in the warm weather I've been getting sometimes up to 100 a night. I've said it before: hedgehogs do not like the rain!
For most of the night we had a courting couple of hedgehogs on the patio and around the feeding station area. At one point when I went out to replenish the feeding bowls, there was one hog in the feeding station and another two came running past my feet as if oblivious of my presence. Unfortunately, none of the photo captures show three hedgehogs together. I'll let the pick of the night's photos do the rest of the talking.
It's been a fair while since I saw two hedgehogs sharing from the same bowl of food.
There didn't seem to be many visits last night, but it was very warm out. Perhaps there were richer pickings elsewhere. Or perhaps Elsa sitting happily on the lawn for ages was a deterrent.
The above picture illustrates quite nicely how long a hedgehog's legs are!
Barney's back:
And who's this?
Yesterday we had a little tidy up in the garden, and I decided to move the hedgehog feeding station and the rubber mat "runway", because it was right in the middle of the patio and not in the most convenient position. So, it's all moved a few feet over to the right and up against the fence. In the photo below in which Elsa is checking over the new arrangement (she likes to be involved) you can see the hedge behind, and in the background of the photo to the left you can just make out the secondary feeding station at the bottom of the garden. I think I'm going to move this a little more to the right too.
We are often told that hedgehogs are creatures governed by habit and routine. I'm not convinced that this is entirely true, and anyway, they didn't seem too confused by the relocation of their facilities here in the garden.
Note the hedgehog feeding from the bowl on the rubber mat. This individual has been visiting regularly in recent weeks. He's distinguishable from the others by the two dark bars on his right shoulder. I'm trying to think of a name for him... Barney, perhaps?
I'm glad to see our blackbird is back! He's hardly had a look-in recently with the wood pigeons and the starlings.
There were so many hedgehogs visiting last night. I rarely get a photo capture of more than two at the same time, but the photos below are not Photoshopped! (Although I did consider correcting the AM/PM set up incorrectly on the camera).
The photos are still coming out with too much bounce-back from the infra-red. I can only conclude this will impove as the charge in the battery weakens.
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