Snuffling on a Monday night

During this current spell of hot weather I've had all the windows and back door open and last night the house was full of the sounds of hedgehogs! There was lots of snuffling going on. Here are the culprits:The one on the left in the above picture was my new friend the little hog with paint on her back (I think she's a she anyway).

She seems to be getting used to me now. I gave her a handful of mealworms and while she didn't quite eat out of my hand she did star munching on them about as soon as I put them down.

Sunday night's hedgehog movie

Here are some hedgehogs in my garden on Sunday night. The first hog we see entering the feeding station desperate to get to the bowl of mealworms is the little hog with paint marks on its back who has been visiting the garden recently.

In the final scene, we see how there comes to be such a mess in the feeding station in the morning!

Return of the Painted Hog

I'm glad to report that the hedgehog with paintmarks on its back which I photographed on Thursday night has been making return visits. I think some of the paint may have been rubbed off because the pattern looked a little different. I did consider that it might be a different hog that had also been marked in a similar way, but having studied these photographs very closely and compared them with Thursday's photo, I am confident that this is the same hedgehog.

The paint can be seen more clearly in this next photo (below) which shows the hedgehog from behind. The hog also appears to have a tick on its back. These parasites are quite common on hedgehogs. Apparently if you apply baby oil, the tick suffocates and falls off.

Here we see the hog doing what hogs love to do best, namely eating. This bowl contains dried mealworms, crushed peanuts and sunflower hearts. The mealworms always disappear the fastest. The other bowl in the feeding station I have recently been filling with Spike's Dinner, a brand of food specifically for hedgehogs that you can buy from pet shops. It is similar to dried cat food. You can also feed them on cat food, so long as it isn't a fishy variety.

This final picture is of a different hedgehog that was sneaking around behind me whilst I was re-filling the food bowls. Note the two bricks behind it. This is where I put the video camera for my hog videos.

I know that a lot of hedgehogs come to my garden, because I have seen a lot of different hedgehogs of different sizes, but the most I had seen at any one time was three. Last night was a first for me, because I saw four all on the garden patio at the same time. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera to hand, and couldn't have fitted them all into a single shot at the same time anyway.

Who's been marking my hogs?

This poor little hog in the above photo looks extremely worried. I do like to let them go about their business without any interference as much as possible, but sometimes for one reason or another I find that I just have to take a closer look. Late last night I saw this hog out of the back door window and it appeared to have weird markings on its back so I went out to investigate.

The hog didn't really want me to examine it and tried to hide behind some canes in the corner of the patio. It appeared to have some paint daubed on its back. I took a quick photo, gave the hog a handful of mealworms and backed off. As I was going back into the house I could hear it munching on the worms, so hopefully its brief encounter with me was forgotten and it was happy to have something nice to eat.

So, how did this hog get paint on its back? I was a little indignant at first, thinking "Who's been marking MY hogs?" (It's funny, I think of them as being mine but of course I know that they are not). However, the more I thought about it, it seemed like a good sign. If someone marked the hog it probably means that they wanted to keep track of its comings and goings to their garden. Which implies that they are interested in wildlife and are possibly feeding hedgehogs themselves. I wish I knew if it was one of my neighbours, as it'd be good to compare notes (and to make sure they weren't putting down bread and milk which is not good for hedgehogs). Personally, I'd prefer it if they didn't mark the hogs, but I suppose no harm has been done.

Close-up video footage of hedgehogs

Last night I tried raising the video camera up by placing it on top of two house bricks so as to eliminate white-out in the foreground where the infrared bounces off the paving slabs. This seemed to do the trick quite nicely as can be seen from these close-up shots of hedgehogs. I scattered some mealworms on the patio to encourage the hogs to come closer-up to the camera.

Poorly hog? Or just tired?

Last night I was concerned about this hog (pictured above) who was sitting in the feeding station for a very long time, seemingly not moving very much. I was wondering if the poor thing was sick, and yes, I did go away and leave it alone for about an hour, but when I checked back it was still there.

I wonder perhaps if it had simply gorged itself on food and was feeling too bloated to move. It was a big hog.

I woke up in the night, at approx 3:00 a.m. and went to to check the feeding station again (because I was worried), and thankfully the hog had gone. I had visions of having to get it to an animal rescue hospital in the morning.

Hedgehog gymnast

Just a short hedgehog movie this time. The hog at the beginning seems to be quite the gymnast! You don't think of hedgehogs as being as supple as that.

Hedgehogs: How to get yourself noticed!

Here is some lovely infrared footage of hedgehog courtship from last night.

The male hedgehog is running around like a mad thing in a seemingly vain attempt to get himself noticed by the female hedgehog, who is sitting inside the hedgehog feeding station and seems far more interested in eating!

"Listen to them, Children of the night. What music they make."

OK, so Count Dracula wasn't talking about hedgehogs when he uttered the words in this piece's title. But he could have been!

Here is a compilation of clips from the weekend. On Saturday night I was trying out a different camera position, although because everything is much closer to the camera we are beginning to run into the white-out problem with the infrared. Sunday night's footage sees the camera returned to its usual place against the back wall of the house.

Notice the scene where a second hedgehog enters the feeding station and tries the push the first hog there out of the way, but this one won't be budged!

Also notice how some of the hedgehogs seem to like sitting IN the foodbowls. This will explain the mess I find in the feeding station when I come to clean it out each day.

Finally - if you have the sound turned on - you'll notice that this movie has a soundtrack of hedgehogs snuffling. This recording was made during one of Friday night's noisier visits when two hogs were doing the "circle dance" (see previous post).

Getting to know you

A quite remarkable thing happened tonight. I'd had a very busy day out in London and was spending all my evening sorting out photos and hopefully some text for another blog that I write, when it occured to me that it was getting late and I hadn't done any hedgehog watching. I had put food and water out already, but when I went out into the garden to see whether there were any hogs about I found they'd already been and gone and eaten all the mealworms in the bowls in the feeding station.

I fetched a tub of worms, knelt down on the patio, took the lid off the feeding station and poured mealworms into the two bowls. I sat back for just a moment and then realised I was not alone. There was a small-ish hedgehog right by my right knee looking at me and twitching its nose, as if to say "About time too! I've been waiting for my dinner."

I was just amazed. I know that the hedgehogs will come if I sit quietly in the garden, but this time I was hardly being quiet. The hog (pictured above) knew exactly what I was doing.

Shortly after this a second hog arrived and they began the snuffling and circling dance. I recorded some of the snuffling on my digital recorder. I'll have a go at seeing if I can succesfully transfer it to my laptop and make an MP3 for you to hear. It's quite a particular sound and you'll understand why I sometimes call them "snufflehogs" when you hear it.