Hi Nic,
Thank you so much for the advice, the update is; the hedgehog is doing well and is a mum. I Didn’t want to disturb her as other than my initial worries she was feeding and seemed quite spritely. I observed her for a couple of days to get close enough to see her back. It turned out that the patch on her back was where there was a tic but now appears to have dropped off naturally. Her strange behaviour made sense now as on Monday she came out of her nest at 21:30 followed by a well developed hoglet. Mum went straight to the feeding station followed by baby. It was such a joy to observe mum happily feed away , and the youngster was clearly having a good look around, it seemed to be pestered mum for a bit for milk before heading back to the nest. I’ve not seen a live hedgehog in my area for years, I first encountered one in March this year and noticed this one in my garden in June. After I posted I did get a little concerned for the little hedgehog as I found one dead down the road and was worried it was our little resident. Thankfully not and hopefully this is a start to a growing population in the area.
