First sighting in Chippenham
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Saw signs of hedgehog poo by the back door on Tuesday so put out some food and the wildlife camera. Happy to see not one but two hogs, eating and very busy from 19:00 to 01:30. Saw some odd behaviour too – not sure if they are “loving” or “fighting”! Having watched the video on here it looks more like fighting. One very passive and the other circling around and then shoving the passive one across the patio. This happened two or three times. Anyone know which it was? I have footage, not sure how to share it on here though.
We are big fans of our hedgehogs, our garden is very wildlife friendly and last year we had a tribe of three that visited every night. So happy to see them back.
Hi jof2
Great news there are hogs back there. Such a lovely time of year, hog returning time!
That behaviour sounds slightly confusing. Normally a hog which circles round and round a hog with the hog in the centre turning around so that it continues to face it, is courtship behaviour. The female in the middle of the circle could look as if she’s being passive, but actually she will be huffing away madly and appears to be making the male prove himself, or something – that can go on for hours, so it’s hard to know exactly what she’s trying to achieve! But it would be unusual for a male to biff a female to that extent, unless he made a mistake and it wasn’t a female at all.
If the circling was fairly short in length it may have been a male trying to work out whether the other one was also a male – bearing in mind they have only recently come out of hibernation. Also you don’t mention what sort of size they were. i.e. maybe the one who got biffed was a younger one. Normally when they are hoglets there seems a bit of an amnesty from being biffed, but when they get older the gloves are off. So he could have been sniffing around to ascertain whether the hog was of such an age that he felt he needed to biff it.
It’s not always easy to tell with a description or even a short clip, but that might give you some ideas.
If you already have the video posted somewhere else on the internet you can just add the link in here. If not, you can have video put on the Hedgehog Street YouTube https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/hedgehog-streets-on-youtube/
Once a video is on there, you can add the link here.Hi Nic. Thanks for the reply. I’ve sent three videos via We Transfer – #28 is particularly entertaining! See what you think. Sorry, I didn’t edit them so they are a bit big.
JoHi Jo
Sorry not really sure what you meant – are they on YouTube (or elsewhere on the internet) already? If so, you should be able to put a link on here. Might be easier than people trying to search through. If you only recently sent them to go on Hedgehog Street YouTube, I’m not sure how long they take to actually get on there – never actually sent any myself.
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