He's only just found out how o get into the hedgehog restaurant though.
Hoggle is quite a character, he seems to do everything at double speed and with maximum enthusiasm!
So meet Hoggle!
Sunday, 22 May 2016
Meet Hoggle
Hoggle is a male hedgehog who has been visiting my garden for at least a month now.
He's only just found out how o get into the hedgehog restaurant though.
Hoggle is quite a character, he seems to do everything at double speed and with maximum enthusiasm!
So meet Hoggle!
He's only just found out how o get into the hedgehog restaurant though.
Hoggle is quite a character, he seems to do everything at double speed and with maximum enthusiasm!
So meet Hoggle!
Saturday, 21 May 2016
Pog?
I can't be sure, as it's hard to identify individual hedgehogs, but I think Pog might be ok!
What I know for sure is that I have at least 2 hedgehogs visiting the garden and I suspect there might be 3 even.
I think 2 are male and 1 is female... the later being Pog!
I'm about 70% sure it's Pog and not another female. In any case it's a relief to see so much hoggy activity after having to bury 2 road casualties last week.
Come back tomorrow to meet one of the male hedgehogs, Hoggle!
What I know for sure is that I have at least 2 hedgehogs visiting the garden and I suspect there might be 3 even.
I think 2 are male and 1 is female... the later being Pog!
I'm about 70% sure it's Pog and not another female. In any case it's a relief to see so much hoggy activity after having to bury 2 road casualties last week.
Come back tomorrow to meet one of the male hedgehogs, Hoggle!
Monday, 16 May 2016
The Good, The Sad and The Old
Last week was very hedgehoggy but also rather heart wrenching.
As I walked to the bus stop on Thursday I saw a hedgehog that had been run over on the road that joins my cul-de-sac. I feared it might be Pog!
I had to catch my bus however, and while I was worrying at work I received a phone call from Linda, who cared for Tig, a hedgehog I found last year. She wanted to know if I could release a hedgehog as she had one that was keen to be off now it was healthy.
Of course I said yes!
So I skived off work early, (thanks boss!) and me and my mum went to collect the hedgehog for release!
It was lovely to meet Linda, yet another wonderful person who cares and puts so much time and effort into helping hedgehogs.
She introduced us to an elderly hedgehog called Toothless first.
Linda said you can tell if it's an elderly hedgehog because it will have a pink nose and it's face fur goes more gingery.
She said Toothless was so named because she has hardly any teeth! When she was brought in she was very thin and they found her teeth were very bad and she had an abscess. The worn teeth were another sign that Toothless was an old hedgehog as are her pale claws.
Lucky for Toothless that she was found because Linda mushed up her food and she put on weight and she got the abscess sorted. Now Toothless is enjoying a nice retirement in a carers garden where she is safe and can get easy to eat food.
A little too easy to eat it seems, as Toothless was at Linda's on a diet! She weighs too much now!
Linda said a healthy weight for a hedgehog is 1000grams. :)
Good luck on the diet Toothless and thanks for letting us meet you, I learned a lot about elderly hedgehogs!
Then Linda fetched our hedgehog for release. She didn't have a name, so I have named her Blossom for ease of reference. X3
She very kindly unrolled when Linda moved her from her hutch to the carry box so we could say hello.
Blossom was brought in from a new housing estate where she had wandered looking for food and been picked up in January when all healthy hogs should be in bed!
Now she is healthy again and ready to go. But the new housing estate wasn't suitable for her to return to so that's why Linda contacted me.
We brought Blossom home and waited for evening for her release.
I buried the poor hog that had been killed on the road, I couldn't bear to have to pass it as it got more squashed thinking it might be Pog. ;___;
I decided to release Blossom at the bottom of my estate where she won't have to worry about the roads. She can choose to go down to the flood plain, up to the estate if she wants, mooch about in the woods and scrub or stay in the area I released her with lots of nice grassy places to forage and some good wild areas too.
I set up my camera trap hoping to catch sight of Pog alive and well at home then went off with Blossom about 9.
But not before a quick selfie with her. Thanks Blossom!
I made her a nice hog house with bedding from a sturdy potato box and took food and water and set it all up on the scrubby fringe of some woodland.
Then I left her to it!
Good luck Blossom!
I returned to find the mealworms on my back porch had already been scoffed, but I had set my camera trap up wrong so didn't get a capture of who it was. But at least one of my hedgehogs was safe and well.
Next morning I walked down to see if Blossom had eaten her food. It didn't seem like she had eaten hardly any. But it's good hedgehog habitat so she probably found enough natural food I think. The site looked undisturbed so I'm confident she is doing fine.
I have checked back the last few days to see if she has come back to the box needing food, but there's been no sign. I think she has embraced her freedom and scarpered to find a nice home of her own.
It's a good area so I'm not worried, she will do fine and meet lots of other hogs! :)
Meanwhile, after 2 nights of no one eating the food inside the hedgehog restaurant, I became convinced that it was Pog who had been run over.
I managed to get one capture of Hoggle visiting the back door tho.
But then after feeling miserable the restaurant food has been eaten the last 2 nights.
But as is always the case when I really need the camera trap to work, it has failed to capture anything despite being in the restaurant! >_<"
It might be that Hoggle has found out how to get into the restaurant. But now I have a tiny hope that Pog is ok and had just chosen those days to wander off to the other end of her territory!
I really hope Pog is still alive! >_<"
As if the possibility of loosing Pog wasn't bad enough, coming home on Sunday I noticed another roadkill hedgehog in almost the exact same location as the one on Thursday (and the same location where I picked Tig up from! (Thank goodness I picked him up!) So with a heavy heart I went to collect that one for burial too. It was in the verge and when I scooped it up I realised it had been dead for a fair while as it was all dried out. It must have been uncovered when they mowed the verge.
Still not a good location for hedgehogs in my area! >_<"
And what a rollercoaster of a hedgehoggy week it's been!
Thank you to Linda and Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue for letting me release a hedgehog, it was perfect timing to brighten my week. And despite the roadkills it is a good area for hedgehogs here!
Everyone please keep your fingers crossed for Pog. I'm trying to figure out what's up with my camera trap so I can hopefully see if it is my ninja Pog visiting the restaurant.
As I walked to the bus stop on Thursday I saw a hedgehog that had been run over on the road that joins my cul-de-sac. I feared it might be Pog!
I had to catch my bus however, and while I was worrying at work I received a phone call from Linda, who cared for Tig, a hedgehog I found last year. She wanted to know if I could release a hedgehog as she had one that was keen to be off now it was healthy.
Of course I said yes!
So I skived off work early, (thanks boss!) and me and my mum went to collect the hedgehog for release!
It was lovely to meet Linda, yet another wonderful person who cares and puts so much time and effort into helping hedgehogs.
She introduced us to an elderly hedgehog called Toothless first.
Linda said you can tell if it's an elderly hedgehog because it will have a pink nose and it's face fur goes more gingery.
She said Toothless was so named because she has hardly any teeth! When she was brought in she was very thin and they found her teeth were very bad and she had an abscess. The worn teeth were another sign that Toothless was an old hedgehog as are her pale claws.
Lucky for Toothless that she was found because Linda mushed up her food and she put on weight and she got the abscess sorted. Now Toothless is enjoying a nice retirement in a carers garden where she is safe and can get easy to eat food.
A little too easy to eat it seems, as Toothless was at Linda's on a diet! She weighs too much now!
Linda said a healthy weight for a hedgehog is 1000grams. :)
Good luck on the diet Toothless and thanks for letting us meet you, I learned a lot about elderly hedgehogs!
Then Linda fetched our hedgehog for release. She didn't have a name, so I have named her Blossom for ease of reference. X3
She very kindly unrolled when Linda moved her from her hutch to the carry box so we could say hello.
Blossom was brought in from a new housing estate where she had wandered looking for food and been picked up in January when all healthy hogs should be in bed!
Now she is healthy again and ready to go. But the new housing estate wasn't suitable for her to return to so that's why Linda contacted me.
We brought Blossom home and waited for evening for her release.
I buried the poor hog that had been killed on the road, I couldn't bear to have to pass it as it got more squashed thinking it might be Pog. ;___;
I decided to release Blossom at the bottom of my estate where she won't have to worry about the roads. She can choose to go down to the flood plain, up to the estate if she wants, mooch about in the woods and scrub or stay in the area I released her with lots of nice grassy places to forage and some good wild areas too.
I set up my camera trap hoping to catch sight of Pog alive and well at home then went off with Blossom about 9.
But not before a quick selfie with her. Thanks Blossom!
I made her a nice hog house with bedding from a sturdy potato box and took food and water and set it all up on the scrubby fringe of some woodland.
Then I left her to it!
Good luck Blossom!
I returned to find the mealworms on my back porch had already been scoffed, but I had set my camera trap up wrong so didn't get a capture of who it was. But at least one of my hedgehogs was safe and well.
Next morning I walked down to see if Blossom had eaten her food. It didn't seem like she had eaten hardly any. But it's good hedgehog habitat so she probably found enough natural food I think. The site looked undisturbed so I'm confident she is doing fine.
I have checked back the last few days to see if she has come back to the box needing food, but there's been no sign. I think she has embraced her freedom and scarpered to find a nice home of her own.
It's a good area so I'm not worried, she will do fine and meet lots of other hogs! :)
Meanwhile, after 2 nights of no one eating the food inside the hedgehog restaurant, I became convinced that it was Pog who had been run over.
I managed to get one capture of Hoggle visiting the back door tho.
But then after feeling miserable the restaurant food has been eaten the last 2 nights.
But as is always the case when I really need the camera trap to work, it has failed to capture anything despite being in the restaurant! >_<"
It might be that Hoggle has found out how to get into the restaurant. But now I have a tiny hope that Pog is ok and had just chosen those days to wander off to the other end of her territory!
I really hope Pog is still alive! >_<"
As if the possibility of loosing Pog wasn't bad enough, coming home on Sunday I noticed another roadkill hedgehog in almost the exact same location as the one on Thursday (and the same location where I picked Tig up from! (Thank goodness I picked him up!) So with a heavy heart I went to collect that one for burial too. It was in the verge and when I scooped it up I realised it had been dead for a fair while as it was all dried out. It must have been uncovered when they mowed the verge.
Still not a good location for hedgehogs in my area! >_<"
And what a rollercoaster of a hedgehoggy week it's been!
Thank you to Linda and Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue for letting me release a hedgehog, it was perfect timing to brighten my week. And despite the roadkills it is a good area for hedgehogs here!
Everyone please keep your fingers crossed for Pog. I'm trying to figure out what's up with my camera trap so I can hopefully see if it is my ninja Pog visiting the restaurant.
Tig's Tale
Last year a month after Pog had turned in for hibernation, I was coming home in the late December afternoon when I spotted a hedgehog foraging on the verge.
I thought it was rather late in the year for a hedgehog to be out so I parked up and went back to see if it was ok.
It seemed active and friendly, but I thought I'd take it home and weigh it in case it was an autumn juvenile that was too skinny and it needed feeding up for winter.
He wasn't at all shy and soon unrolled when I put him on the scales.
He came in at 314grams. That was much too skinny!
So he went into a crate with plenty of Pog's food, water and a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel under it to keep him warm. I put a smaller cardboard box in the crate so he's have somewhere to hide.
I named him Tig and then I left him in peace for the night. I could hear him crashing about and munching mealworms in the night, by morning he'd totally trashed the crate! XD
I rang Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue and they said to bring Tig over to them.
Brian who runs Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue was brilliant, he weighed Tig and got him settled in under a heat lamp as soon as we arrived. Tig was lucky, Brian had 14 hedgehogs in his garage and had only just got enough space to take Tig in because so many hedgehogs were coming in due to the mild winter!
He thought Tig might be from a 3rd litter due to the mild weather.
There is a lot of bad information given about how much a hog should weigh to survive hibernation and Brian likes all the hedgehogs he looks after to be 700 grams at the minimum for a hog heading to hibernation.
So remember folks, 700grams is the minimum a hedgehog should be when it's going into hibernation.
Also you should leave food out for hedgehogs even in winter because they can wake up needing a snack! So leave dry food out for them so it's there when they need it!
Brian has lots of brilliant hedgehog stories and so we spent ages chatting, and got to see a tiny hedgehog with a broken leg which was in plaster that Brian was caring for. He said the plaster was due off soon and that hedgehogs are very resilient!
Brian explained that all the hedgehogs that come to them get wormed and treated with antibiotics so that they can be fully healthy and focus on putting on weight rather than fighting parasites and diseases.
So we left Tig in Brian's expert care.
I called back the next week to check how Tig was doing and was pleased to hear he was already gaining weight and had gone to a foster carer who would look after him for the winter.
Then on Christmas Eve I received a phone call from Linda, the lady who was fostering Tig, she said he was doing really well. in two weeks he went from 314grams to 547grams! I later learned he had rather a rough ide, suffering from various illnesses before he was brought back to full health thanks to Linda's careful care.
Tig has been released back into the wild now. He didn't come back to my patch but is helping mix up the genetics of another hedgehog population.
Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue and all the foster carers do fantastic work and I can't thank them enough for taking such good care of Tig and all the hedgehogs they look after.
It takes a lot of money as well as time to look after hedgehogs in need, you can donate directly on Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue's Website or if you buy a Hedgehog Door, we are donating a percentage of our profits to help Hedgehog Rescues!
I thought it was rather late in the year for a hedgehog to be out so I parked up and went back to see if it was ok.
It seemed active and friendly, but I thought I'd take it home and weigh it in case it was an autumn juvenile that was too skinny and it needed feeding up for winter.
He wasn't at all shy and soon unrolled when I put him on the scales.
He came in at 314grams. That was much too skinny!
So he went into a crate with plenty of Pog's food, water and a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel under it to keep him warm. I put a smaller cardboard box in the crate so he's have somewhere to hide.
I named him Tig and then I left him in peace for the night. I could hear him crashing about and munching mealworms in the night, by morning he'd totally trashed the crate! XD
I rang Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue and they said to bring Tig over to them.
Brian who runs Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue was brilliant, he weighed Tig and got him settled in under a heat lamp as soon as we arrived. Tig was lucky, Brian had 14 hedgehogs in his garage and had only just got enough space to take Tig in because so many hedgehogs were coming in due to the mild winter!
He thought Tig might be from a 3rd litter due to the mild weather.
There is a lot of bad information given about how much a hog should weigh to survive hibernation and Brian likes all the hedgehogs he looks after to be 700 grams at the minimum for a hog heading to hibernation.
So remember folks, 700grams is the minimum a hedgehog should be when it's going into hibernation.
Also you should leave food out for hedgehogs even in winter because they can wake up needing a snack! So leave dry food out for them so it's there when they need it!
Brian has lots of brilliant hedgehog stories and so we spent ages chatting, and got to see a tiny hedgehog with a broken leg which was in plaster that Brian was caring for. He said the plaster was due off soon and that hedgehogs are very resilient!
Brian explained that all the hedgehogs that come to them get wormed and treated with antibiotics so that they can be fully healthy and focus on putting on weight rather than fighting parasites and diseases.
So we left Tig in Brian's expert care.
I called back the next week to check how Tig was doing and was pleased to hear he was already gaining weight and had gone to a foster carer who would look after him for the winter.
Then on Christmas Eve I received a phone call from Linda, the lady who was fostering Tig, she said he was doing really well. in two weeks he went from 314grams to 547grams! I later learned he had rather a rough ide, suffering from various illnesses before he was brought back to full health thanks to Linda's careful care.
Tig has been released back into the wild now. He didn't come back to my patch but is helping mix up the genetics of another hedgehog population.
Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue and all the foster carers do fantastic work and I can't thank them enough for taking such good care of Tig and all the hedgehogs they look after.
It takes a lot of money as well as time to look after hedgehogs in need, you can donate directly on Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue's Website or if you buy a Hedgehog Door, we are donating a percentage of our profits to help Hedgehog Rescues!
Friday, 13 May 2016
Hedgehogs - The Science Bit
I found a great webpage with really detailed scientific information on hedgehogs. So if you want to delve a little more deeply into hedgehogs physiology, behaviour and more, I recommend you visit this website.
I certainly learned some new and fascinating things, and I haven't finished reading yet!
I certainly learned some new and fascinating things, and I haven't finished reading yet!
Monday, 9 May 2016
Hedgehog Week... Is Every Week!
I had hoped to post more during Hedgehog Week, but well, things happened. Anyway here it's ALWAYS Hedgehog Week so I shall just continue posting fun hedgehoggy stuff!
On Saturday it was the launch of the new Hedgehog Improvement Area in Rugby.
I went along to say Hi to Simon Thompson from the Solihull HIA and Debbie Wright, Rugby's very own Hedgehog Officer! To my delight Debbie was dressed in a really brilliant hedgehog costume!
There were even free hedgehog shaped cookies! It was hard to eat them because they were too cute! XD
If you didn't get to come along and find out what the Rugby Hedgehog Improvement Area is all about, don't worry, you can take a look at the Help For Hedgehog Website.
On Saturday it was the launch of the new Hedgehog Improvement Area in Rugby.
I went along to say Hi to Simon Thompson from the Solihull HIA and Debbie Wright, Rugby's very own Hedgehog Officer! To my delight Debbie was dressed in a really brilliant hedgehog costume!
There were even free hedgehog shaped cookies! It was hard to eat them because they were too cute! XD
If you didn't get to come along and find out what the Rugby Hedgehog Improvement Area is all about, don't worry, you can take a look at the Help For Hedgehog Website.
Monday, 2 May 2016
Pog News, Now in Colour!
I've been trying to tempt Pog up to the back door with mealworms so I can see her better without scaring her.
Last night I tried with the light on and she wasn't worried at all, look!
She didn't stay long because she had to run off and deal with a cat!
I was surprised, she ran at the cat and raised all her spikes. The cat soon got the message!
Well done Pog!
While I was busy watching and videoing Pog, I didn't realise she had brought a guest to dinner!
In the restaurant behind her, another hedgehog was having a good ole munch!
I'm delighted to gave another prickly guest! I hope it's Pog's boyfriend, and I hope it visits again! X3
In other Pog news, the previous night I had watched Pog from the back window, then gone up to bed. As I went to close the curtain I saw Pog scampering across the road to the house across the street. Then she sprinted all the way along the fronts of the houses on the opposite side of the street!
She looked more like Sonic from the rate she was going and she definitely was on a mission! :D
Pog seems to be doing her bit for #hedgehogweek by being very entertaining!
Well done Pog! :3
Last night I tried with the light on and she wasn't worried at all, look!
She didn't stay long because she had to run off and deal with a cat!
I was surprised, she ran at the cat and raised all her spikes. The cat soon got the message!
Well done Pog!
While I was busy watching and videoing Pog, I didn't realise she had brought a guest to dinner!
In the restaurant behind her, another hedgehog was having a good ole munch!
I'm delighted to gave another prickly guest! I hope it's Pog's boyfriend, and I hope it visits again! X3
In other Pog news, the previous night I had watched Pog from the back window, then gone up to bed. As I went to close the curtain I saw Pog scampering across the road to the house across the street. Then she sprinted all the way along the fronts of the houses on the opposite side of the street!
She looked more like Sonic from the rate she was going and she definitely was on a mission! :D
Pog seems to be doing her bit for #hedgehogweek by being very entertaining!
Well done Pog! :3
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