Of Mice and Hedgehogs

Last night I set up the trail camera in a different position, in an attempt to get some variation between these videos, and also because I thought the hedgehogs would show up better against the dark background of the soil in this position.

I put food and water out in the usual position, but also scattered a few handfuls of mealworms down in this new place. I had been putting a small amount of mealworms here for several nights already, encouraging the hedgehogs to move around the garden a little.

I was quite surprised at how many mice turned up in the resulting footage. It's no wonder that Elsa likes being out in the garden so much.

Hedgehogs on Wednesday night

The latest hog movie from here in Pembrokeshire. Also features to now usual mouse and robin!

Bee hotel

Here's my "bee hotel" which I finished putting together earlier today. Instructions on how to build one are freely available on the internet. Mine was cobbled together from scrap pieces of wood - mainly from an old piece of skirting board, a handful of nails, and sections of bamboo and dried Japanese knotweed (because I ran out of bamboo).

The idea is that you hang them in a warm place that catches the sun, and mason bees populate it and lay their eggs inside the tubes. It's all about encouraging bees to your garden and giving them a helping hand, especially considering that bees have been dangerously in decline in recent years.

I'm not 100% certain that hanging the bee hotel on a tree is a good idea. They may prefer it to be on a wall, but I put it on a tree because we didn't really have any suitable walls that catch the sun for a large period of the day. I'll leave it up on the tree for a while and see if any bees take up residence. If they don't, then I'll see about relocating it to somewhere they might find preferable.

Hedgehogs... and a mouse... and a robin

It's not only hedgehogs that are partial to mealworms, it seems!

Solitary hedgehog(s) on Tuesday night

All last night's video captures where a hedgehog was present showed just a solitary hedgehog. Whether they all show the same individual or if a number of different hedgehogs were visiting at different times, I do not know.

It's interesting to note that whereas on previous nights there are no video captures of hedgehogs past 11:30pm, last night there were hogs still showing up at gone 3:00am. I wonder if the rain had anything to do with it?

By the way, there were mealworms scattered all over the grass; they weren't just in the white bowl (which was just as well, because in some shots you can see it's full of rainwater). I scatter mealworms on the ground because it makes for more interesting viewing to see a hedgehog snuffling about than one sitting with its nose stuck in a bowl.

There must have been a few mealworms left over by daylight, because of the presence of the robin, who we see in the final couple of scenes of this video.

Bad bad behaviour!

Hedgehogs engaging in a bit of rough and tumble! Note that in the penultimate sequence, a third hedgehog turns up. And then there were three!

Picky eaters?

Last night I tried giving the hogs dog food to eat. I don't think they were keen. All you see them eating in the above video are the mealworms that I also put down. These were all gone by 11:30pm and then there were no more hog visits. I had a couple of captures of my cat Elsa trying the dog food, but that was the only interest, I'm afraid.