Hedgehog visitors
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Several weeks ago I made a feeding station for our local hedgehogs, out of a plastic storage box, put in a bowl of water and cat biscuits, and put it under the hedge near my small wildlife area which has a shallow pond. It was not long before the food was disappearing. To confirm it was a hedgehog I purchased a camera. We are now getting lots of visitations every night, starting about 9.45 pm and finishing about 4 am. Several different hedgehogs visit, though the 2 biggest ones have a tussle if they arrive at the same time! I am having trouble identifying them but I think we have 4 visiting, I now give them them dried hedgehog food, and I am putting down 3 shallow bowls of food with the water, (a handful of food in each bowl) all the food is disappearing, (one of the bowls is in the wooden hedgehog house nearby,) the weather is exceptionally hot at the moment but am I overfeeding them, or should I offer more variety? should I give them wet cat food as well? it is lovely to watch them scuttling about,
Hedgehogs have been visiting our garden for several years, but this is the first time I have actually filmed them. We are so lucky.Splendid news about your visitors and you’re doing all the right things to keep them coming back. Remember that the food we put out for them is meant to be supplemental to their normal diet and is not their main source of food. The amount of it that they’ll eat will vary over time and is not necessarily an indicator of what they think of it nor of any reliance upon it so don’t worry about them having a variety or that they’re not getting enough.
If it all goes every night then give them more if you want to but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be overfeeding them, don’t worry about that. I do occasionally give them a treat (semi-moist Spikes Dinner) but a treat is more in my mind than it is in their’s who probably think a big juicy beetle is far more of a treat than anything I throw at them. I just know they prefer the semi-moist if given a choice.
The most important thing at the moment is definitely water and more water.
Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll have a happy gang of hogs.
I have the same sort of ‘problem’ inasmuch as the food is going every night and my camera shows several different hedgehogs visiting – one of my neighbours has ‘conveniently’ marked several with some sort of paint (grrrrr!) so I know there are at least 5 regulars!
My problem is that I now have over 500 video clips! I get about 10 each night and I have been watching since May! I have started to delete ones that don’t show anything ‘new’ but it’s hard to delete – even if it’s just a hog running from one side of the image to the other! They are all so lovely! But I do have some good clips of 2 hogs in the feeding station having a good biff, also some ecstatic scratching and multi tasking by paddling whilst they drink!
Still no blessed hoglets though! Although I do think that all my visitors are boys so that might have something to do with it!Hi DwarfHog
My advice to you re. the video clips is to put the really good/interesting clips somewhere separate now, whilst you still haven’t got too many. I have lost count of how many usb memory sticks full of hog videos I now have, most of which I will probably never look at again! And I only got my first cam last year! I know what you mean about deleting, but there comes a time when you really have to! I am trying to follow my own advice with new ones, but wonder how many really good bits are hidden amongst all the rest.
I thought I was going to sort them out last hibernation time, but instead there were just more coming in, with the hog who didn’t hibernate! The moral of that story is ‘don’t put it off’.
On the hoglet front. I spotted one on video ‘exploring’ but it didn’t seem to find the food and hasn’t been back. Hopefully it will come exploring again one night.
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