What video cameras would people recommend for watching hedgehogs

[Maggsy]

Basically I have hedgehogs visiting the garden, I tried to make my garden more hedgehog friendly wood piles letting bits of the garden, go more wild, feeding station hedgehog houses, and ensuring there are gaps in the fence to aid easy access to the neighbours gardens.

I would like to observe them more, but if I’m in the garden when they are around when they seem seem to smell me, they shoot off very quickly, or if I accidentally disturbed One of them walking around the roll up in a ball, personally I think it’s good that they shoot off when I’m around, as not all people are a hedgehog friendly, therefore I personally glad that they do, so I tend to avoid going in the garden the night as not to disturb them, but I’d really like to observe them more, therefore I was wondering what cameras would people recommend that as works well for them to observe they’re hedgehog visitors

Anyway, thank you for reading this and appreciate people’s responses

[Mrs Prickles]

We’ve had a couple of Bushnell NatureView HD trail cameras for a few years and we’re very pleased with them. They are not exactly cheap but they give very good night-time video (and daytime too if you want to record birds). We get through quite a lot of batteries because we have a lot of hedgehog and woodmice visit us. The cameras take 12 batteries each. I buy Duracell Industrial AA batteries 50 at a time via Amazon which works out cheaper than just buying packs in a shop. There’s lots of different cameras out there and, hopefully, other Champions will come up with more suggestions. Congratulations on making your garden hog-friendly and I hope you continue to get pleasure from your prickly visitors.

[Nic]

Hi Maggsy

Really pleased to hear how you have made your garden more hedgehog friendly. It is much better for the hogs to be able to find as much wild food as possible. I agree with you about the hogs being suitably wary of us humans. We are predators after all.

I’m not much good with cameras – one of mine packed up after 6 months and I haven’t replaced it yet! However, I watch the hogs from inside the house – using it as a sort of hide. I leave the outside light on (not all that bright) and the inside light off, in the area I am in, and watch through the window. Whilst I found the footage on the cameras interesting, and wouldn’t want to be without a cam now, it comes a very poor second to watching the hogs in real time – especially if you are interested in their behaviour. I put the hogs’ bowls at a distance that I can watch through binoculars so can get a really close up view of them. It means I can watch behaviours without having to worry about the hogs going out of range of the cam, the most interesting behaviour being between videos, etc. But the cam is a useful back up.

Hope you have better luck with a cam than I did!

[Maggsy]

Thanks Prickles, and Nic, for your response,

I will check out the cam you mentioned on the Internet, also I will think of ways that maybe I could use lowlight in the garden and watch from inside, as occasionally, I can see them through the window, from upstairs. With the light on downstairs, but it only gives a small lowlight reflection to a very small part of the back garden, so most the time, it’s me looking through the window, seeing nothing, but when I do see them. I always get way excited, but as soon as they move off further up garden, then I lose sight of them in the dark, anyway once again thank you both

[James]

Hi Maggsy,
Lovely to hear you have altered your patch to accommodate the hedgies. As
for cameras, I have had mine for almost a year and had no trouble from it.
It cost about £60 from http://www.laptopdirect and it was delivered next day. The best part was it came with the Kingston 32GB Micro chip included. Ebay
has a similar one going for the same price with free postage. It is a 720P/30FPS video Digital Trail Camera with 5 Mega pixels. 20m range of IR Flash, with a trigger time of 0.6 seconds. It is water resistant, however sometimes the lens does fog up with the weathers precipitation, which is natural. I make sure as well that the micro chip is formatted regularly by using the cameras on board facility. If you do not do it regularly it tends to clog up. There is a more expensive version of it as a 1080P going for £76. One that looks like an updated version of mine now costs about £43 on Ebay, which again is a digital hunting trail camera for outdoor wildlife. I agree with Prickles about the AA batteries. I buy 50 Duracell at a time, though up to now I have not had to replace the original 8 I put in some time ago. It seems to wear well. It does say you can use 8 or 4 batteries but I prefer the 8. This will probably give you the standby time of 12 months.
We both enjoy watching the hedgies antics every morning on the laptop. Last night we had the pleasure of watching a fox vying for the dry food with the hedgies. Happy viewing with whatever camera you choose.

[Baldwin hedgehog]

Hi Maggsy,
Ive had a Ltl Acorn camera 5210A for several years and its never let me down. It has good picture/ video quality day or night and is easy to use. It has 3 motion sensors rather than just one so the camera primes itself before an animal moves directly into view. Thats good for catching hedgehogs that speed past. Cost about 100 pounds
NHBS is a good site i recommend them.
Good luck

[Wilkys Wildlife]

Hi Maggsy,

It sounds like you are in a similar position to where we were a year ago. Speaking from experience, you won’t regret making your Garden more wildlife friendly. It also cuts down on the amount of work needed to keep it tidy!!

We use fairly cheap external IP cameras over our home WiFi which appear to work quite well. The first lot we were buying were made by IdeaNext and the last couple are made by Wansview. Both around the £40 mark from Amazon. We’ve got some fixed in the garden, but also have fitted some to the top of tripods so we can move them around depending on where the action is.

You can watch the cameras live or set up in various ways to watch them later. We now find we don’t watch the telly much! Hope this helps xx

[TawnyKyn]

Hi Maggsy,

I had been using a Bushnell NatureView camera which has been reliable. I have lent it out to any local friends who wish to find out more about night time visitors (especially those who think they have rats, but are pleasantly surprised to find they have hedgehogs instead).

This gave me the excuse to buy another camera for me as a spare. I bought recently a Crenova Trail camera which is very similar but has a screen you can view what you record. What I also found interesting was that on the recording as well as the date/time stamp it puts the temperature, very useful at this time of year with hibernation coming up.

Temperatures are very up and down at the moment, last night very cold and not much activity, but one night this week it was 11c and I had one hedgehog at the feeding station.

The Crenova was also a lot more affordable and I found easier to set up.

During the winter, I watch all the clips as I miss my visitors when they are hibernating, the place seems empty without them, sniff, 🙁

[Richard Thompson]

I recommend WingHome trail camera here!
Trigger speed is good, the trigger time is 0.4s, so that it won’t a single movement of the hedgehogs, it can produce both images and videos, which is very flexible for your different needs, besides, the battery life is good so far (8 months on the same set of batteries taking over 1000 pictures) and easy to use.

This is the cute squirrel caught by my WingHome 350C trail camera.

[Author]

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