Hedgehogs first for camera

There is definitely a lot to watch out for in the garden at the moment between the plants, birds and wildlife. What a great time of year this is!



Our blue tit female is still busy with her nest and I will post her progress in a couple of days as at the moment it is very much a work in progress! If and when this nest is complete, based on last year, there will initially be weekly updates then they will become more frequent all the way through to daily – fingers crossed. However, last night I was thrilled to be watching the hedgehogs visit again which you can see above in the first video footage from my new night/day camera.

There is definitely more than one hedgehog visiting my garden now - but could there be two or three? Now, this is where this camera will come into its own. I can use it see a larger area and perhaps we may see more than one hedgehog visit at a time. That could be interesting to see how they behave together.

What a thrill this is to see hedgehogs especially when last year at this time I didn’t even know they were visiting! It just goes to show what visitors can come to our gardens during the night too. Last nights first visits were early at around nine o’clock but I expect that was because it was a cold night and they were hungry. We had hail stones again yesterday.

On a more serious note, my first thoughts are to feed the smaller hedgehogs and I was delighted to see a smaller one take food last night. At the moment I am putting out little trails of crushed peanuts and sultanas to lead them to the dishes where there is water too which I took from my water butt.

I initially thought I would use this camera for the blackbird Nestbox which I may do yet. But as this was an inexpensive camera, deliberately chosen as an experiment, the quality of picture colour isn’t as good as I would have liked. I chose to have audio instead of a better quality picture but it isn’t that good either.

However, on the positive side we were still able to watch activity in the garden at night which really is a fantastic opportunity. I wonder what other wildlife we will see? Perhaps a fox? I have seen one walking up our street in the past but it has always turned around and walked out again. I wonder if it explores the back gardens. I will continue to experiment with this camera and instead of fixing it to an area I have chosen to have it fixed to an old tripod we had in our attic. This will now be my roving camera which will be much more fun – BBC Wildlife Teams watch out!! I will also be able to set it up facing my hedgehog house to see if anything goes in or out it. Who knows, it may be chosen as a suitable place for a nesting female hedgehog – now that would be something!

The video footage from this camera is taken using infrared LED’s. I took ages positioning the tripod as any closer the lights give up too much white light and you were unable to see the detail of the hedgehog. I intend using this camera more to find the wildlife in the garden at night then on dry nights I will put out my video camera and get much better footage. However, I thought I would share this first footage that we caught on camera. You can now see what we can see in the garden at night.

The video above was taken in my garden on April 9th 2008.

Hedgehogs - noisy eaters?

It is almost a month since we have had hedgehogs visiting our garden taking food from a dish I put out. I have read that the hedgehog was a noisy eater so last night I put out the video camera again to try and catch this on film. You will perhaps need to turn up the volume on your speakers to hear it. I will let you make up your own mind – it is difficult to tell as it makes a lot of noise moving the food to get to the peanuts. This was another eight minute visit – I wonder if they don’t like being out in the open for periods longer than this?



No drinking tonight – did you notice? I thought it looked like the hedgehog was testing the water by smell. That I did find interesting as this water didn’t come out of my water butt that collects rain water – it came from the outside tap. Most nights they get rain water but last night my watering can had some water in it so I just used that. I will put rain water out tonight and see what happens. Perhaps the hedgehog simply just wasn’t thirsty but it was licking its lips as it left – definitely with a face that was saying ‘I’ll be back’!

The video above was taken in my garden on September 11th 2007.

Hedgehogs eat peanuts

For over two weeks now we have seen a hedgehog visit my garden. Last night I tried to photograph our visitor with my camera on a tripod all set to just quietly open the door and snap. I positioned the feeding bowl just outside my feeding box with peanuts (plus a few sultanas) on one side and water in the other.

A photograph would have appeared here if I had one but, alas, the hedgehog ran off quickly. It was interested in the food though, especially the peanuts, so I expected it would come back. As it was a dry night I put plan B into action - the video camera outside on the tripod. We spotted three visits between 10-11pm. The video below was the third and the longest visit we saw lasting eight minutes. I have edited the film but it ate the peanuts for a solid six minutes and was seen drinking for two! If you look closely you will be able to see its tongue as it begins to drink.



Sultanas have been the food that I have given our hedgehog until two nights ago when I tried peanuts. I have to report that the peanuts are the favourite now! I hadn’t realised that the hedgehog would drink so much either – thanks go to Jan for passing on this information. Jan also very kindly invited me to view a webcam of her hedgehog visitors. This has been very interesting to see as she has more than one visiting. The internet really can be a great way of sharing information. To see our full hedgehog story and see other videos look here.

The video above was taken in my garden on September 2nd 2007.

Hedgehog feeding station success!

For seven nights we have followed the progress of a hedgehog visit my garden. For five nights I have had a feeding station set up where I have experimented with foods to tempt it in. After a few days it looked like it was going in - but last night video footage confirmed this. It entered the feeding box only 15 mins after I put the food out! I saw its visit through a window and the camera caught it too. I believe it was probably disturbed with our voices inside and quickly left. The video below fades out when it fed in the dish of sultanas for almost 4 minutes. I have not altered the speed of this film.



Would it make a return visit? I was pretty sure it would as on other nights every single sultana has gone.

Can I be sure it is the same hedgehog visiting? No, I have no way of measuring that even if I was to stay up all night watching the box. Perhaps there are more than one visiting at different times during the night.

Did it bring any friends last night? Well, by the condition of the box this morning I would say 'yes' and they had themselves a party too! Initially when I saw the box this morning I thought something else had moved it about - but then I spotted the ‘evidence’. I typed hedgehog droppings into Google Images and yes I can confirm that the party animals were indeed hedgehogs!

The photos below show the feeding box as I found it this morning. However if you are about to eat you may not want to scroll further down to the photos of the hedgehog droppings that I have very generously decided to share. As you will see they were in the food dishes too and most were squashed but I was left with one fine specimen! Perhaps you have also spotted them in your garden but didn’t realise they belonged to a hedgehog.


Are hedgehogs new visitors to my garden? After seeing the droppings I can confidently say ‘no’ to that question. I have seen these droppings on my grass before and wondered who they belonged to - but I never considered a hedgehog. I can also fairly confidently say that it has most likely to be the sultanas that I throw out for the birds that they have been enjoying as well as my slugs and snails and perhaps that is why they are not interested in the dried food.

What next? Well, I wonder if I will see more than one hedgehog come to my feeding station at the same time? Perhaps then my feeding station will be too small. Of course you could guess what I would really love to see visit one day – a hedgehog juvenile!

The video above was taken, just after 10pm, on August 23rd 2007.

Hedgehog still visiting garden

It has been almost a week now since a hedgehog was spotted and filmed in my garden. It has visited every night since then. Last night I had my video camera out again but didn’t catch it on film. I’ve logged our visits purely out of interest – I have no experience whatsoever of hedgehog visitors. I approached this new visitor like I would do any new species of bird in the garden.

More information – I have a number of links on the right column of this diary/blog and I knew I had one for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society so that is where I looked. I browsed the site and found a list in ‘From our leaflets’ then selected ‘Autumn Juveniles’ . I have a number of juvenile birds I have been watching in my garden but I had no idea at all that from September to the end of November juvenile hedgehogs may visit too. If you are interested in reading further about hedgehogs I would recommend a visit to this site as there is lots of useful information including instructions on how to make a Hedgehog House . In autumn hedgehogs begin to collect material as birds would do for their nests but they need are building a home to hibernate in over the winter months. Nature really is quite amazing isn’t it?

What do they eat? This is always the next thing I look up when a new bird species visits my garden. Well, hedgehogs like slugs and snails so it really is the gardener’s friend - especially if you grow hostas, as I do, as the slugs and snails love them! Pet shops and some garden centres will stock dried mixes of hedgehog food and it is widely known that they also have a liking for cat food but the Society also suggests that they also like dog food too – it is the meat bases that they must really like. I decided to buy dried hedgehog food for them.

Night visit number two was raining very hard and there were puddles on the ground. Dried food would be no good at all. I had read on the BHPS website that hedgehogs may take sultanas – so I scattered a few on the ground. I was confident that they would not go to waste as the blackbirds and the song thrushes love sultanas in my garden! We watched from a window and sure enough the hedgehog came and very quickly cleared through the lot - then ran off into the garden.

Night visit number three is when I began my feeding experiment. I had read about feeding stations in the BHPS website – again this was completely new to me! But just as we put up our Camera Nestbox and waited patiently to see if it would be used I thought it might be fun to try this too. I bought a rectangular plastic box which was almost transparent and cut a hole at one of the shorter sides for an entrance – 13cm x 13cm as the BHPS suggested. Turned upside down the box was to be used as a tunnel so that a cat was unable to get to the food inside. I bought a cat feeding dish from a pet shop (sorry, I have to smile at that) and put water in one side and the dried food in the other. I placed the dish at the opposite end from the entrance. I then scattered a few sultanas outside and just inside the entrance with some dried food too to tempt the hedgehog in. If it did come in this would mean that on wet nights I would still be able to give it food. Again it visited and took the sultanas – but only the sultanas and didn’t enter the feeding box.

Night visit number four was when I reduced the number of sultanas outside the feeding box and added some in the mix with the dried food. I also scattered a few sultanas and some dried food in front of the dish. We never saw the hedgehog visit that night but in the morning all sultanas on the ground were gone. Inside the feeding box the dried food on the ground was crushed - it definitely looked like the hedgehog had been in the box. It also looked like it was only searching for the sultanas as the dried food in the dish had been disturbed and some food was out of the dish and also the bottom of the dish could now be seen. This was getting interesting!

Night visit number five and my daughter filled up the dishes, with dried food only on one side and fresh water in the other. She put sultanas outside the entrance only and once again they were taken. It wasn’t clear if the hedgehog had entered the box this time.

Night visit number six, last night, I cleared out the dish and dried out the side that had water in it previously. This time I filled the water side with sultanas only and the other as usual with the dried mix. I placed the dish half way in the tunnel and only put out five sultanas on the ground in a trail to the side of the dish with sultanas in it. Only one sultana was placed on the ground outside the box. I set up my camera once again and waited to see what would happen next. The picture below is a grabbed frame from my video camera last night showing the feeding station as I set it up for the hedgehog.


Disappointingly, I did not catch the hedgehog on film –but it did visit again. This morning I was very interested to see what had happened in my feeding box. The picture below shows no sultanas on the ground and all sultanas gone from the dish. It also looks like the hedgehog has searched through the dried food too!


Tonight, I think I will place the dish in the same place inside the box. I might try putting some sultanas in both sides and add a very small number of dried bits of food on one side. At the moment it looks like we will have a dry evening so I will set up my video camera once again. I would love to catch on film a hedgehog entering the feeding station I made especially for it. Oh yes, and I would also like it to bring a friend!