All animals are much cleverer than we initially think.
It’s gonna be minus 3 in my area on Friday night – so now putting out two bowls of dried food, one bowl with spikes, the other with cat biscuits. Just as the juveniles (two or three now) are still eating and I’m now trying to offer a bit more to give them a better chance. They completely finished the one bowl last night, so thought I’d double it up tonight. So far only one has been a couple of times this evening, and eaten quite a bit. But don’t think they’ll get through all the food.
If they don’t hibernate, they are gonna be the biggest hedgies in town by spring – all those adults will be submissive ones and the juveniles will be ruling the roost. Fingers crossed that they’ll survive as it looks like this year (so far) winter’s set to be a cold one.
At least I don’t suffer from flooding in my area, but near to areas that do – been working in these areas this week, trying to replace public rights of way – (one in a park and one in a primary school nature area), and even though we have put at least 6inches of stone down above the ground – all the water rises to the top of it and the new path is flooded. We’ve had to get permission from the council to put pipe’s in.
I’d dread to think if my area was like that, all the hedgehogs that have visited my garden might have drowned.
But on a good note, we’ve spent ages digging out space for a massive pond, which is fairly deep in the middle, and lined it on Halloween, and I came back today – and it was full to the brim.
But a shocking autumn for the hedgehogs.
Have you any ideas as to why this year has been particulary bad for the late arrivals, the hedgehog hospital keeps putting updates such as ‘another one under 300g, what is going on?’
A BBC article said the reason was because a lot of hoglets have drowned, and the females have given birth to another litter to replace them? Do you think this is the reason?
