Brrrrr...

The summer is ending and the nights are getting colder, and the hedgehogs are feeling it. We again had three nest boxes occupied last night. 9a had a a small baby in all day yesterday and it was in there today as well. It also had several visitors during the night.

Nightshift and her larger baby were in all day yesterday and all day today, although they were out (separately) most of last night. We don't know what has happened to Nightshift's smaller one, Saffy with the poorly foot. We are getting quite worried that she's on her own, but she seemed well able to look after herself. It may even be her in 9a - every time we see a baby on the cameras we try and look at the front right foot.

A large hoglet was in 9d yesterday and today, and it came back several times last night for a nap (or a warm?)

We had put some straw in 9a when we cleaned it out, but after seeing the babies moving all the straw from the hall into the bedroom, we added a fleece and a lot more straw. The extra straw in the hall was also moved into the bedroom. Yesterday morning we saw a hedgie collecting up some of the loose straw we'd dropped and carrying it into the nest in its mouth:



so we put a couple of handfuls of straw into the tunnel and left a large pile of straw by the entrance to the tunnel. It seems this was much appreciated.



The hedgie continued for quite a while after this clip, adding more straw. Surprisingly, it then wandered off out of the garden, and spent the day elsewhere, but there is a small hedgehog in 9a. Could it be that it was looking after its sibling? It seems strange to put in all that effort and then go away.

Here's a clip of Nightshift under the decking in January, after she'd woken up from hibernation, collecting nest material:



Back to last night, it was the coldest night so far last night, and the hoglet in 9d was also pulling in the straw, so we put more in the tunnel for it as well. We've been round today and put more straw in the tunnels, and added more to 9b, which is still empty.

There were lots of babies in and out of the garden during the night, but we only saw one large adult besides Nightshift, and that was tucking in to the mealworms in 9e, the plastic box feeder. We saw it leaving about 6:15 this morning, just as it was getting light.

We are still getting the visitors at the front - there may be one in the boiler room at the moment. Unfortunately, we've discontinued the camera temporarily. The video capture stick collects .avi files, which I've been processing using Windows Movie Maker - we've never had a video camera, so we've never done any video editing, so we never had any software. I found Movie Maker is free, and it serves for what we need, which is just to cut out the hedgie clips. Unfortunately, after three days use it now tries to save to CD instead of disk, whatever I tell it to do. Seems to be a common problem, so it's on hold until I fix it or sort out an alternative, otherwise we'd get totally snowed under with videos. The other cameras are on hard disk recorders, and just overwrite the old video.

We had a lovely little visitor to 9e.



This seems to be Nightshift's larger one... must think up a name for it, as it's so much easier to use a name. It is certainly enjoying paddling in mealies. We've given up on the idea of a mixed diet. A few nights ago we put some chopped peanuts and sunflower kernels into 9e. A total disaster. Not a single hedgie visited 9e that night! Not only that, we had 88 motion detect captures of mice. There are a few mice around the garden - not really surprising as we are in a village in the country - but we'd never seen a mouse in 9e. The following night was mealies only, so the hedgies were back, with a few mice visits. Fortunately, no more mice since then.

Wonder if we'll see little Saffy tonight...