Young Hedgehog

I found this beautiful little hedgehog outside my house on the pavement and about to cross the road. Now, that set up a bit of a dilemma in my mind: what should I do? On the one hand I appreciate that hedgehogs are wild animals and that we shouldn't interfere with the natural course of things too much, but on the other hand - and this was my immediate reaction - I thought "No, don't got that way, come to my garden and I'll give you some food."

I didn't like the idea of the hedgehog on the road where it might come to harm. Obviously, short of keeping it in a box there's no way I could keep it from such harm forever, but I very gently picked up the hedgehog and took it to my back garden where I gave it mealworms. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to want the mealworms and scurried away to the undergrowth. Well, at least for my own peace of mind it's safer in the environs of my garden and my neighbours' gardens than out the front on the asphalt and paving slabs and where there are cars.

I know you shouldn't interfere with hoglets - the really tiny little baby hogs - unless you really have to, but looking at this one it was a bit older than that, and was perhaps 20cm in length. From what I understand hedgehogs don't make particularly good parents and abandon their young to make their own way in the world at quite an early age. This little hog, I believe, would be such an example. There certainly were no other hedgehogs nearby - it was out on its own.

My rationale in bringing it into my garden was that it might make it realise that it was a good place to come for food and water. Let's hope it sticks around.

A busy night at the hedgehog feeding station

Here is some more footage from last night, which was a busy night at the hedgehog feeding station. At one point it looked like it was getting a little crowded in there!

Note how the second hedgehog to enter lifts its tail. At the risk of sounding indelicate, it turns out from the evidence found later that it was doing a poo. I've seen hedgehogs do this near to a foodsource when other hogs are around, and think possibly it might be territorial "staking a claim" behaviour.

Saying "Thank You" to a Hedgehog

This movie, although hardly action-packed, illustrates quite nicely the relationship I have with the hedgehogs that visit my garden. I like to think that they tolerate me so long as I don't make any sudden moves. If I sit or stand quietly, they don't mind me being there. Some, like this one, even seem to pose for me and wait patiently while I take their photograph.

Note how this little hog standing in the entrance to the feeding station, whilst wary of me, unflinchingly stands its ground even when I put a handful of mealworms right beneath its nose. The object I pick up from near the entrance, by the way, is a digital audio recorder. After picking this up, I withdraw inside. See how the hedgehog eventually accepts the present of mealworms and starts eating them.

Not all hedgehogs that come to the garden are quite as brave as this one. Possibly some are more regular visitors than others and are more used to me coming and going, filling up the foodbowls and taking photographs.

Springwatch

At last I get one of my hedgehog movies onto the BBC Springwatch website. I don't think it's the best movie I've sent them, but perhaps they didn't want to use the others because they were compilations of clips rather than one continuous piece of footage.

A few Sunday night hedgehog photos

I went outside just a few minutes ago and sat on the back door step and just watched and listened to the hedgehogs. There was a lot of snuffling going on! Here are a few of the culprits:

Saturday night's hedgehogs

Here's some late Saturday night hedgehog action. Well, not too much "action" as such, it's mainly hedgehogs eating, although one poor hog gets pushed around by another quite roughly in one scene.

Earlier on in the evening I had the feeding station in place. I thought I'd experiment by putting the camera directly inside the feeding station. It was worth a try, but the results were not useable. The insides of the box are just too reflective and so you get a total white-out. Also, if a hog comes too close to the camera then you just get a big white blob in the picture. It's a pity I chose then to try the camera out inside the box, because I was watching through the back door window and saw quite a lot of hog action outside of the feeding station.

There were between three and five hogs in the garden at the same time (it's hard to count sometimes when they are running around - one runs off and then one appears and you don't know if it's the same hog or a new one). One hog in particular seemed to be quite hyperactive and was pushing the others around and was quite literally running in circles around the garden. Unfortunately none of this was captured on camera.

Nevertheless, please do take a look at the above video. It contains some really nice footage of our spiky friends.

Hedgehogs on a wet Friday night

Here's a compilation of last night's footage. The hogs seem much more subdued in behaviour than they have been recently. There's none of the seemingly aggressive pushing and shoving going on, and for most the time there's only one hog around at a time. Note how in the beginning clip one hog is blocking the entrance to the feeding station - this is why I moved one of the food bowls outside as seen in the remainder of the movie, even though it was raining.

Back home in Oxfordshire

It's funny, but I've really missed my spiky friends. I couldn't wait for it to get dark tonight and for them to make an appearance at the food bowls. The motion sensor infrared camera is outside now as I type this, so expect some more hedgehog movies this weekend!

Red Kite in Pembrokeshire

Here we see a Red Kite flying over the field behind my parents' garden in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The field is in the process of being harvested and the kite is following the combine harvester and tractors presumably to see if anything scavagable has been turned up by the farm machinery.

Red kites have been succesfully re-introduced to England and Scotland in recent years - there are plenty to be seen back home in Oxfordshire - but here in Wales there's been a population of them all along, although admittedly the numbers are much better these days than they have been.

Foxy business in Wales

I'm still in Wales, so sorry, no more hedgehog pictures until I get back home. But in the meantime here's a fox that's been in the field behind my parents' house for most of the evening. The farmer has only today cut the grass down - the fox has probably been around in previous days, but would not have been visible in the long grass.