A wet but busy Friday night and the mystery of the white-tailed hedgehog

When it came to reviewing the night's video footage, there was so much good material that I really was spoilt for choice. I had a real problem deciding which clips to use to show you here. We'll start off, however, with some nice close-up clips of hedgehogs eating in front of the feeding station:

In the next video, we see the hedgehogs running around a bit more and going in and out of the feeding station. After the first scene fade at around the 0.45 point notice how the hedgehog upon entering the feeding station shakes itself like a dog (it was raining outside). I noticed this behaviour about four or five times when reviewing the night's footage.

All in all, when viewing the night's footage, I believe I counted five different individuals. The hedgehog we see in the next video clip, however, left me puzzled. He (for we can see he is male) appears to have a long white "tail". My worry was that it might be some kind of injury, but I suppose it's possible that it could be a piece of litter or a feather that has become attached to the spines. I'm going to keep a lookout for this hedgehog, in case it is something that requires attention. I'm hoping that it's no big deal, and that the object will be worked loose naturally.

Little hog visits

At a few minutes past 9:00PM I was just about to put the trail camera out so as to capture some video footage of the hedgehog visits overnight when I saw this little chap tucking into the mealworms and chopped nuts. I took a couple of photos through the cat flap; however this activity caught the attention of Elsa who was out in the garden and caused her to come running up to the cat flap. This flurry of activity in turn worried the hedgehog a little and he soon scooted off to the safety of the hedge.

A few moments later I saw him at the side of the patio and took this quick picture (he obviously didn't want to go too far away - not when he knows there is food nearby!). I gave him a handful of mealworms as a thank you, which he was soon yumming up.

As I type this Elsa is in the garden happily watching one hedgehog sniffing around the bike shed, whilst another hedgehog is at the secondary feeding station down at the far end of the garden.

May Day Hedgehogs

These pictures from last night are very dark, because the battery in the camera was low and it gave up altogether by midnight. Ironically, the reduced power meant that the infrared was not very strong and so we ended up with some quite nice hedgehog photos with none of the dreaded white out.

The hedgehogs do seem to be very hungry at the moment. I've been having to re-fill the bowls for the last couple of nights because all the mealworms are eaten up by 11:00PM. Last night I also put a bowl of Elsa's cat food out (she's being very fussy again and refusing to eat perfectly good food), and the hedgehogs yummed that up too. I won't be able to put out Elsa's cat food rejects today, as I was trying to get her to eat some fishy cat food, and apparently fish-based cat food is not good for hedgehogs.

According to Twosie, this week is Hedgehog Awareness Week. I must confess that this is the first I had heard of it. But of course, every week is hedgehog awareness week around here!

How many hogs?

Blimey, just look at this!

But no, I can't tell a lie. It's a Photoshop montage which I made from Friday night's still captures for a bit of fun. Those hedgehogs were all there, but not at the same time, and the same individuals are probably in the montage more than once.

Here are the best of the night's genuine captures:

Wet Thursday night

Thursday had been very wet all day and into the night, but I decided to put the camera out to see if the hedgehogs still came despite the rain. I put all the food inside the feeding station as the hedgehogs don't tend to like it when it's turned to soup. Captures on the camera were well down with the camera only being triggered 12 times by hedgehogs throughout the night. That's compared to approximately 70 times on a warm night recently.

When daylight came, the camera was triggered a handful of times by the birds that come down to see what scraps of food the hedgehogs had left. Regular readers might remember that I had evidence of one cunning starling that had figured out that it could go inside the feeding station for, possibly, richer pickings. Well, as the following photos show, now it seems they are all at it!

Small hog on Tuesday night

Tuesday night was a busy night for hedgehogs in the garden, with several showing up between 8:30PM and 5:00AM or thereabouts. On hog in particular struck me as being rather small. Too big to be a juvenile at this time in the year, I would have thought, but smaller than I would have expected to have survived the previous harsh winter. Unless possibly it lost a lot of weight during that time.

Monday night's hedgehog slideshow

I set the camera up to capture stills last night, but nearly all the captures were either too reflective with hedgehogs being whited-out or else they were blurred - those hogs can move quickly. However, I've used the all the available captures to create a video slideshow so that you can see the amount of activity in a single night. It looks like there might have been a couple of altercations too when there was more than one hedgehog on the scene at the same time. It looks like there's some argy-bargy at 5:00AM.

The hedgehogs have been getting friendly again...

...and this time I have some (shaky) video footage:

Apologies for the quality of the picture. It seems that the female hedgehog is lying on her back - which answers the age-old question! (Or perhaps not... see the comments!)

Here is the photo of the pair afterwards. I have a feeling the male is waiting for the female to uncurl so they can resume their earlier activity.

Tuesday night hog movie

I'd accidentally set the trail camera so that it took 15 second videos (I usually set it to one minute). However, it worked out quite nicely as we get lots of little snippets of footage of hedgehogs in different positions and doing different things and which makes for quite a lively video. Watch how the first hedgehog reacts when the second one shows up towards the end of the video.

Hedgehogs getting friendly on Sunday night

Uncharacteristicly, two hedgehogs were staying down at the end of the garden tonight rather than coming up to the feeding station on the patio. Here we see one of them drinking rainwater from the trug. Note in the second photo that it has a tick near its left eye. This is the hog that I brought into the house last night to treat for ticks, and that is the tick I couldn't get.

So what were they doing down the end of the garden? It seems something was afoot. Readers of a delicate disposition may want to look away for the next two photos.


I'll guess I'll have to look out for signs of little hoglets in a month or so!