Two Hogs Sharing Our Hedgehog Box

I'd suspected something funny was going on.

 

We knew we had two hedgehogs of similar size visiting the feeder.

 

But the camera monitoring the hog box entrance confirmed my suspicions.

a Really simple hedgehog feeder

We still put food out for our local hedgehogs most nights. 

 

Our old hedgehog feeder has put in good service, but the wooden base is now rotting away. 

 

So its time to come up with a replacement.

Finding a use for autumn leaves

We like to think we have a wildlife friendly garden.

 

The trees are now dropping their leaves

and we have started to 'put our garden to sleep' for the winter.

A Hedgehog in our Hog House

 A hedgehog started to use our 'hog house' a few weeks ago.

So I put my PiCam at the entrance to monitor its comings and goings.

Feeding the Rats (...and hedgehogs) part 1

We are all encouraged to feed garden birds and look after our local hedgehogs.

But its difficult to do this without boosting the population of pests, such as rats.

So is there anything we can do to get the balance right?

What we have learnt about hedgehogs

We have been capturing pictures & video of hedgehogs in our garden for the last 18 months.

Its been very interesting.

So what have we discovered?

our Huffing Hedgehog

Apparently hedgehogs have a range of sounds that they can make depending upon their mood and situation.

The sound on our trail-cam has always been a bit 'iffy', but when it works it can reveal interesting behaviour.

We noticed a faint sound on some recent recordings, so I cranked up the audio level by 18dB...

Newts, hedgehogs, bats & BirdBox2019

I wasn't really prepared for this spring.

There was too much going on inside the house for me to be able to keep an eye on the garden.

Fortunately, time waits for no man...

BirdBox 2019: early interest (...plus hog & bats update)

Seeing small garden birds showing an interest in our bird boxes is a reminder that the nest box season will soon be upon us.

There is a long run in, a couple of months of building, egg laying and chick rearing, and then its all over for another year.

So make sure you are ready by putting up any new boxes now!

Bats, Hogs & Hibernation

I used to think that 'hibernation' meant 'sleeping through the winter' in the sense that an animal went to sleep in November and woke up at the end of March.

Maybe this is why my tortoise died.

I stuck him in a cardboard box when I was 7, and only went back to wake him up in April.

the Hog is back!

After an absence of 4 or 5 years, the hedgehogs have returned to our garden.

Well, one hog, at least that's a start.

So now we need to give this little guy a helping hand.