Sorry for the long break in posting...

...unfortunately my trail camera has been giving me nothing but trouble and I haven't been able to use it at all. But I have been feeding the hogs each and every night, although I rarely see them these days. It's not like when I was in Oxfordshire and the hogs came right up onto the patio and I could view them through the window. The hogs here are very shy and rarely venture further than the very bottom of the garden.

I just went outside a few minutes ago and photographed this small-ish hog. It's not the best picture, I know, but I just thought it was about time I updated this blog.

Heron fishing in Newport, Pembrokeshire

Here's a heron I videoed whilst on a walk yesterday.

(More hedgehogs soon - the trail camera battery takes an AGE to re-charge!)

Hedgehogs stills from Tuesday night

After what I was saying yesterday, I decided last night that conditions might be right for capturing some stills using the trail camera. I put food out at one end of the lowest slate step into the back garden and the camera at the other. I'm sure the wet weather helped combat white out too! And these are the photos that resulted - only a handful, mind you, before the battery ran out (again!).

(Times removed from photos because the time setting on the camera was wrong!)

Monday night's hedgehog

Apologies if this blog has been a little video-heavy recently. In previous years I liked to vary the posts some more, so sometimes we had photos, sometimes videos, and sometimes slideshows. Alas, I can't seem to get decent stills from my trail camera at the moment. I find that the infrared is just bouncing back and whiting out the whole picture. Some of you will remember I took various measure to combat this in the past in the previous location by laying down black non-reflective rubber mats on the ground, taping up the LEDs on the camera, etc. Well, I've used the tape on the camera again, but the mats would seem a little incongruous here, I feel. Still, here's a colour photo I snapped last night. I don't like to do too many of these because of having to use the flash. I don't think the hedgehogs get too spooked by the flash, but nevertheless I prefer not to use it.

Hedgehogs and other animals on the bottom step

Last night I put a bowl of food on the bottom slate step leading into the lower garden, partly to see if the hedgehogs were willing to roam around the garden a bit more and not just stay in the bottom left corner by the compost heap, and partly because I thought the video would be better with the slate beneath them rather than grass and without foliage causing infrared light bounce-back to the camera.

Come the morning a number of birds also make an appearance, as does Elsa.

Hedgehogs courting

You have to feel sorry for the female hedgehog... the male's idea of "foreplay" is hardly the most romantic!

Hedgehogs videoed in our garden in Pembrokeshire, Wales, on Friday night, 1 July 2011.

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!