Hi Ann44
Sounds a lovely place for hedgehogs.
And, yes, that sounds like what I and many other people call the courtship ‘dance’. They can sometimes go on circling for hours. The male circles around the female. She sort of goes backwards and turns around at the same time, if that makes sense! So that he doesn’t reach the back of her. It is usually her that does the huffing. Sometimes this comes to nothing and one or other of them will just walk off. If the passing hog was a less dominant hog, he would probably not want to be noticed, for fear that the other hog might leave the ‘dance’ and come and biff him, which is not uncommon, here.
Hogmeister. I had to laugh at the thought of mythical hogs roaming in imaginary banana plantations munching on banana based recipes!
Your garden sounds a much more friendly place for a hog to be. Sounds like just what they would like. Ideal recipe for ‘happy hogs’!
I like to watch their different behaviours too. There is a timid one here as well – one of last year’s hoglets. He creeps along very low to the ground and makes himself ve-ery long. The other night he was eating contentedly when a very large male turned up and started eating – a minute later another hog turned up closely followed by the boss hog, who promptly biffed the large male, but the other hog was behind him so basically, boss hog was pushing two hogs along at once. Then he managed to get his nose under the large male and flipped him right over the top of the other hog! The large male is actually bigger than boss hog. The little timid chap was a bit bemused by all this, but just stood there, luckily for him out of the way. I was watching at the time, but it wasn’t until I saw the video that I realised what had actually happened – it was all so quick. Boss hog must be one strong hog!
