Introducing the bowl hog!

Here's my second hedgehog video from Pembrokeshire. As you will see the picture quality is a marked improvement on yesterday's video. This was achieved by the extremely high-tech method of sticking a couple of pieces of black electrical tape over half of the infrared LEDs on the trail camera!

Note how when the second hedgehog comes along the first sits in the food bowl and hogs it! It was just as well I also scattered some mealworms on the ground for the other hog (which also encourages more activity for the purposes of the video).

Ahh... it's good to be back blogging about hedgehogs and showing my videos and photos.

The first hedgehog video from our Pembrokeshire garden

As you will notice from the first sequence in this video we have hedgehogs, plural! So, we have at least two. I wonder how much of a population there is here?

Apologies for the lack of quality - I'm getting that old infrared glare problem again which is usual when setting up the trail camera somewhere new for the first time.

The hog's back again

Look who's back. I'm sure this is the same individual that I saw on Tuesday night because of the colouration.

My first Pembrokeshire hedgehog!

I can't tell you how pleased I am to see another of my spiky friends at long last. I was thinking I wouldn't get to see a hog down here, what with the number of badgers locally. One or two neighbours, however, had mentioned that they had seen hedgehogs and so I persevered in putting food and water out just on the off-chance that a hog might come this way. The food has been disappearing over the last couple of weeks, and I believed I saw some hog poo recently. But tonight I went out to put some mealworms down and I saw this little fellow. I took a couple of quick photos and then left it alone. I don't think these countryside hedgehogs are quite as used to people as those in the town where I used to live.

At last! A badger caught on video!

I suspected there was a badger visiting up at the top of the graveyard because of all the animal tracks. After weeks of leaving out the infrared motion detector trail cam and having caught footage of foxes, rabbits and squirrels, finally I get these few fleeting seconds of a badger.

It's Samson the Seal

OK, so this wild animal isn't exactly in my back yard, but it is an example of local wildlife - you just need to get to certain places on the coast in order to see it. I was walking with a friend on a section of the coastal path in Abercastle, Pembrokeshire, when we saw this face watching us from the sea. The seal seemed just as curious about us as we were of it. It was particularly exciting because neither of us had seen a seal in the wild before. We saw three more a little later from the top of the cliffs, but obviously not as close up as this.

Oh, we called him "Samson" as we were walking to the nearby ancient burial chamber known as Carreg Samson.

As ever, click the photos to enlarge.

These photos were taken on Saturday, 26 February 2011.

Pheasant gets to grips with a fat ball

We've been putting lots of food out for the birds in the garden, including a couple of fat balls which we've hung in the trees. This morning there were tidings of magpies (apparently that is the correct collective noun) and I think one of them must have plucked one fat ball from the tree. This hen pheasant, another visitor who has been frequenting the garden recently, seemed to be getting great pleasure from the fat ball, flipping it up in the air by the surrouding netting and pecking at it. It was quite comical to watch.

Another seasonal bird: the Redwing

This Redwing was outside my grandmother's flat this afternoon. There seem to be lots of thrushes in general around at the moment, including blackbirds, of course, and seasonal visitors in shape of fieldfares and redwings.

A Christmassy Robin

Some festive pics of our robin, taken on Christmas Day.

The final hedgehog photos from my garden in south Oxfordshire

I've now been in Pembrokeshire, Wales, for a few days and am still setting in. The last couple of weeks have been hectic, but on my last night in the old house I did put the infrared camera out. Looking at the captured images today I am quite surprised to see quite a lot of activity because the impression I had was that hedgehog visits had dropped to a mere trickle each night.

This will certainly be the end of the hedgehog photos on this blog for this year. Perhaps next Spring I might find a local population here in Pembrokeshire.