Hibernation

[twinklestar]

Hi all

I’ve been following this thread with interest. I have been feeding and filming the hedgehogs in my garden all year. I only had two regular visitors and they usually visited between 2 and 3.30am. We’ve had a few frosts here (I’m in the East Midlands) and I didn’t see them for a couple of nights, so I thought that was it for the year. I packed my camera away but left food out in my feeding station. Suddenly all the food went. Cats can’t get at it, so I put the camera back up and I am getting hedgehogs from about 6.30pm through to 5.30am. I never get more than one on the camera at once, but judging by the varying sizes there are at least four different hedgehogs. Where have they all suddenly come from and how do they know I have food in my garden? Last night I had 48 separate images of hedgehogs, when normally I’d get 15 on a good night. I’m loving it – but just a little surprised. If anyone has any theories I’d love to hear them.

Lu

[Nic]

Hi Lu

Sorry no-one replied to you earlier. I think a lot of people ‘hibernate’ from Hedgehog Street when the hogs do! I missed your message until today.

I think the hogs must follow the trails of other hogs to find the food, but they do cover quite large distances foraging for food. At this time of year, I don’t imagine there is much wild food left, so they may well be going further afield. It quite often seems to happen at this time of year that hoglets (some of them quite a bit bigger than others) appear, often after their Mums have gone to hibernate. Last year, there were new hoglets turning up here until the end of November – several weeks after all the adults had disappeared. So my guess would be hoglets, even if some of them may look nearly adult sized.

Most hogs will eventually hibernate, but I have heard of some hogs who have just carried on visiting all winter.

[logginthelog]

The little one (though not so little any more) is still visiting us every night, and we think it may have taken up residence in the hedgehog house at the top of the garden – somebodey definitely has. We are so pleased he is still coming – getting a good feed and gaining plenty of weight. The longer he comes, the more likely he is to survive the winter. And , I think I caught the adult on camera the other night too, so maybe that is just keeping a lower profile rather than hibernating.
We also have plenty of cats, rats and a fox that visits (oh, and a rabbit was in the garden Monday night, for some reason, God knows where that came from) so plenty of animals eating – though I don’t think the cats are eating, just watching, as we put Ark hedgehog food down, which the don’t seem to bother with. The rats like it though 🙁

[jack]

Hi,
I thought that all my hogs had gone off to hibernate as i havent seen any movement on camera for 2 weeks. That was until 0545 this morning, I heard a rustling near my back door and thought it’s probably one of the neighbours cats trying to get at the hog food, but it was a hog. I have no idea where he’s come from and why he’s not tucked up in bed as it was -1 here this morning.
I checked the occupied hog house and the hog that set up camp is still in there (even though I had to take him out back in October so I could clean the house out, was worried that he would go else where but I think he’d decided to stay as there was food on tap for him- fingers crossed he makes it through to spring).
So even more food put out tonight incase he decides to come back. Hope he hibernates soon as it’s really cold.

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