Hedgehogs again – hooray!
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After a very sad time both personally and hedgehog wise, I have happier news. I came back at the end of January after nearly 6 weeks away following my mother’s death, and then immediately was involved in a hedgehog rescue which didn’t end well (Nic chatted to me about it at the time). The little hog sadly had too many ticks and died at the vets.
I then lost heart for a while, as it rained and rained and I didn’t have a secure place for feeding set up. Then tragically my husband died very suddenly on March 7th (aged 73) and for weeks everything has been a real struggle and I didn’t even feed the birds (one of my husband’s jobs) for some weeks.
I have lovely neighbours each side, both interested in wildlife and the young woman one side told me one day a few weeks back that she was feeding the hogs again (she has an underbed plastic box set up), and was using a night camera and had seen 2 hogs. This piqued my interest, and she thought that they were sleeping in the roots of the bamboo that acts as a hedge between us. I cleaned out a new hedgehog box that I had put out rather late as a winter sleeping box that hadn’t been used, and set it up on the other side of the bamboo with just some hedgehog food (ie no bedding) and immediately it was eaten. It has a small tunnel to deter bigger creatures so hopefully I can be fairly sure that it is the hogs going in to feed. It is not ideal as only one hog can go in easily at a time , but it’s all I can do for now, and they are being well fed also on the other side.
The other day my neighbour asked me if I had heard the hogs the night before as they were having very loud sex in my front garden. As my sitting room is upstairs and with double glazing, sadly I heard nothing, but am excited about the idea of the babies. I have reinstated last years igloo which was not brilliant, but thought it was better than nothing if the female needed somewhere to rest in a hurry – I had some clean hay left so put it in there too.
More worrying is that there is also a fox around apparently and the neighbour even mentioned seeing a badger on the camera. I did wander out one evening to see if I saw anything, but there was nothing moving that night. I would like to buy one of those night cameras but not sure how easy they are to set up, so am holding off for now until I know more on them.
Hi Aggie
So sorry to hear you have been having such a rough time. Really pleased that you have nice neighbours, which you share interest in hogs with. Good news that there are hogs around again. Nothing like hogs to cheer us all up.
I imagine what your neighbour heard was the courtship circling, during which the females turn round and round huffing – quite loudly, whilst the male circles her. This can sometimes go on for hours, but doesn’t always lead to mating. Hopefully it did on this occasion and you will have some hoglets visiting later on.
The badger is not good news, for the hogs, hopefully it won’t appear again.
The cameras are very easy to set up. If you are worried about what to attach it to, they have webbing straps with them which you can easily attach to posts, trees, or one of mine is attached to a water butt! There are a few topics about them. One recent one was this https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/forums/topic/best-wildlife-camera-to-use/ There have been lots of others at various times.
Good luck. Hope you and the hogs stay safe. Happy hog watching!
Hello again Nic and sorry for the late response.
Thank you for clarifying about the courtship circling. Yes, it will be wonderful if we have hoglets here! I cannot imagine how hedgehogs manage to mate at all with all those prickles – how do they manage not to get hurt on their sensitive bits?
Yes, I had read that badgers were not good so yes, I certainly hope that it wasn’t a regular visitor.
Thank you re the comments about the cameras and the link. I was most concerned about whether I would be able to work out how to operate the camera as I am not much good with modern technology. I haven’t even got a Smartphone yet!
Still, one of my neighbours (the one who feeds the hedgehogs) now has 2 cameras so if all is lost I can go to her to ask (eventually when lockdown is eased). She says that she has a very cheap one and a more expensive one, and that the cheap one is easiest but you get a red light on that one which is not so good.
Hi Aggie
Yes, hedgehogs do have to be careful when mating with all those spines and the female has to co-operate. They apparently need to get into a special position. I have some video where a female hedgehog has actually lifted the whole area of her spines up above her back legs , which would make it much easier. Whether that forms a part of the procedure, I am not sure, but if not, I’m not sure why not! But difficult to see when the male is normally covering that area with his body during mating. But, hogs have incredible muscles around their spines, not least to be able to roll up. She actually looked a bit like a poodle with a fancy haircut! Unfortunately I couldn’t see what she was doing just before.
Don’t worry about not being able to work a camera, I’m sure you’ll be fine. Once they are set up it’s very easy. There are usually various settings that you need to decide which you want to use. i.e. photos or video, day, night or both – that sort of thing. But once you have one, you probably won’t want to be without it! Mine emit red light in varying degrees, but the hogs don’t seem to mind at all.
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