I would love to see our pigeons try something similar Jan-Marie, but they are more like couch potatoes, they just wobble around under the bird feeders waiting for the food to come to them.
That’s good news Nic, but it’s still very worrying that there seems to be so few females around. Hoglet numbers were well down last year and this year I only know of two females at the most, compared to around eight to ten males. They are such secretive animals and there is still so much that we just don’t know. Nagini’s mother was herself an autumn juvenile from the previous year, who managed to survive the winter despite having roundworm and lungworm. She was taken to our local rescue for treatment, where she rapidly gained weight, so fearing the imminent arrival of hoglets, was returned home A.S.A.P. Sure enough, soon after, around this time last year she disappeared for a week and then started turning up during daylight, something which she never ever did, she was an expert at avoiding me and the cameras. All the evidence pointed to her being the mother and the hoglets were indeed her spitting image, she had unusually long legs and a long narrow body with a very dark nose and dark ears. That being the case, she would only have been around ten months old when she gave birth. The only other female around at that time was a totally different colour and shape. She didn’t hibernate for very long, so maybe that made a difference. Sadly she hasn’t been spotted since last August, but I like to think that she could just be avoiding the cameras or wearing one of those invisibility cloaks.
