I’ve managed to go almost 2 whole months without doing another hog blog, but there’s been lots happening in the garden and I can no longer resist! Pink & Freda are still with us, plus at least one other hog, possibly more.

Pink is still using the nest box with the camera in, which is great. In the three months since she was released she has continued to ram the box full with leaves and straw. The first video below shows how empty the box was the night she was released – just the straw I’d put in there to start her off and you can still see the entrance tunnel on the right of the sleeping area.

 

Three months later and you can see how much nesting material she has managed to cram in there. Some days it is impossible to see anything through the camera because the leaves are pushed right up to the lens. Still it’s better for her to be well insulated than for me to have good views of her sleeping.

 

Here’s a view from outside Pink’s house. You can see how much nesting material is already in there and she’s still taking more in. Considering this will be her first winter, she is doing really well making her nest warm and snug. Fingers crossed she manages a successful hibernation.

 

Freda, our three legged hedgehog, continues to thrive in the garden. She can move very well on 3 legs and is surprisingly agile. The cameras caught her hopping over the bars at the bottom of the BBQ with no trouble at all:

 

Hedgehogs aren’t the only animals benefitting from the food we put out. We are also feeding several local cats. Most of the cats I think have perfectly good homes to go to, but one I suspect maybe a stray. He is an elderly looking gentleman, a sort of greyish tabby colour, who looks like he’s seen a lot of life! We’ve named him Roughtie Toughtie. I was pleased therefore to get a video of him and what I think is Freda sharing food quite amicably one night.

 

Freda was courted quite determinedly by a male hog called Wodan when she first returned to our garden in the summer. I had wondered whether she would have a second litter, but as it got to half way through October, there were no signs of any hoglets. But then last week I downloaded the camera footage and spotted what looked like a small one. I wasn’t sure at first but then found these clips which clearly show a much smaller one next to an adult. (sorry for the flashing effect on the video, not sure what was going on with the camera!)

The adult hog with the hoglet wasn’t Freda (too many legs), but then the hoglet may not have actually been with the adult, they may just have crossed paths. I’ll probably never know for sure whether they were Freda’s or another female’s.

Hedgehogs need to reach an absolute minimum of 450g by the time they start hibernating to stand a chance of surviving the winter. The bigger they are the better their chances, but anything below 450g at the start of November is going to need to be rescued. I’d only seen one hoglet but there might have been more, and the one I’d seen looked very small. I faced the prospect of sitting up that night trying to catch hoglets to weigh them.

So I wrapped up warm, took a torch, the kitchen scales and a pair of gloves outside with my kindle to read – potentially I could be out there a long time! Fortunately the hutch was empty so I had somewhere to put any hoglets I found – I prepped it with fresh bedding and food and water and sat down to wait. After an hour there had been no sightings of hedgehogs and I’d played a lot of sudoku on the kindle. Half an hour later and I could hear rustling but still no sightings of hedgehogs of any size. So I decided to have a walk about with the torch. Heading down the garden I spotted Freda, another adult (possibly Pink) and a hoglet! I grabbed the somewhat surprised hoglet and popped it on the scales – 240g, way too small to make it through the winter, so in the hutch it went. I gave it another half hour and went back out – another hoglet, just 206g this time. Into the hutch it went with its sibling. An hour later I thought I’d have one last look in case there were any more and spotted a third – 238g.

All three spend the night in the hutch until I could get them to Viv of Malvern Hedgehog Rescue (http://www.malvernhedgehogrescue.co.uk/) the next day.

The three hoglets turned out to be 2 females and 1 male. So far no other small hoglets have been spotted on the trail camera, so I’m hoping I managed to get the whole litter.

Roughtie Toughtie the cat spends a lot of time sleeping in our garden and since he looks like he may have no home,  we’ve bought him an outdoor kennel. Needless to say I have yet to see any evidence that he is using it, but we can but try. The night I caught the hoglets, I’d had the cameras out as usual and filmed one of the hoglets investigating the cat kennel just before I caught him/her for weighing. He or she struggles a bit to get in the big kennel, but was clearly determined to check it out.

 

I seem to be totally unable to resist a new gadget for watching wildlife in the garden. The latest one I found is this illuminated hedgehog feeder. The hogs don’t seem bothered at all by the light and started using it straight away. We’ve put it in front of our patio doors so we can sit on the sofa and watch them feeding. Freda has been using it and at least one other unidentified hog (not Pink as I’ve been able to watch her in her hedgehog house at the same time as this one was feeding in front of us). With the lights off in our living room, I can creep along the floor with the camera and photograph/video the hedgehogs feeding without them realising I’m there. Took a bit of trial and error working out how to stop the camera flash and also realising that I needed to clean the smudgy glass in the patio doors!

When I took the hoglet trio into Viv for overwintering, I ended up bringing back a bigger hog for fostering (seemed a fair swap). Gwendolen, as I’ve called her, just needs fattening up before she can be released. Hopefully if the weather stays mild this can be soon, but after the risks of bonfire night have passed. Here she is checking out the strange sounds and smells in our garden from her hutch.

 

So that’s a round up of hedgehog activity in the garden over the last couple of months – lots going on. To end though, the annual plea to please be careful if you’re considering building a bonfire this year. Bonfires just look like an ideal home to a hedgehog, so please only build them just before you’re going to light them. If for some reason you really have to gather the wood together earlier, please try and move it all before lighting or at the very least lift it up and check underneath for sleeping hedgehogs. Only light the fire from one side, to give any creatures under there the chance to escape from the other side. #rememberhedgehogs.