We’ve suspected for some time that we’ve got an evening visitor, so with lockdown in full swing, and finding time on our hands, and trying to think of something new to do – we bought a wildlife camera. We didn’t expect such dramatic images quite so quickly, but here is a set of four nights showing various aspects of the behaviour of 2 (or 3) different hedgehogs – at least one of them a female.
Night One – 27th May 2020
I was tempted to think this was a small hoglet – our first visitor.
The next clip shows two different visitors – one of them being a female.
Night Two – 28th May 2020
Jenny has heard strange noises for a few weeks and we thought we might have mice in the loft over our kitchen, but now we think we know it was a hedgehog making the noise outside in the passageway. The larger the hedgehog, the greater the snorting noise. They don’t move around quietly, as the third clip demonstrates.
Night Three – 29th May 2020
This was so unexpected. It has been suggested that it’s mating behaviour, but maybe it’s the youngster trying to show the older male who’s boss now! We moved the camera around the garden for a couple of nights, but all the action seemed to be on the patio outside our back door at c.22:00 and then c:03:00 each night. So we moved the camera back to the patio, and this is what we captured …
Night Seven – 2nd June 2020
Well … that was real surprise. Hopefully, the camera has survived to catch another day!
So we now believe there to have been three hedgehogs visiting us. A pair, and an older and larger solitary hog. The pair have a routine that brings them up and down the path beside the house, and the older one seems to come through the fence from next door – but “he” doesn’t seem to have been around since the “confrontation” we observed. The young pair would appear to have established our patio as “their territory” along with the rats – which also seem to come from two directions.
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