News from the Front

The last few mornings we have found evidence of quite a lot of hedgehog activity at the front of the house, in the form of empty mealworm saucers and large hedgehog poos, so we decided to reinstate the "front cam" to see what was going on. We moved the camera so that it looked towards the door to the boiler room. There has been evidence of hedgehogs in the boiler room each morning, although we aren't sure if any have stayed during the day.

We were rather surprised at the activity. The main culprit was Nightshift. She had a good snack of mealworms - then went into the boiler room for a nap. Then up for a snack, and back for a nap. She did this four or five times during the night, although she did leave the area once or twice.

Later in the night, a second hedgie arrived, just as Nightshift was tucking in... so Nightshift bulldozed it away. It hung around for a while, and when Nightshift went into the boiler room again, it had a very light snack - Nightshift had already cleared the saucer for the second time (we had to refill it about 9pm).

The newcomer then went into the boiler room as well. We expected one hedgehog to vacate the area very quickly, but they were in together for a while, then they left separately. Unfortunately, I haven't sorted the video editing yet, so no clip for this yet.

We also got a nice clip from the "Tunnel Cam", the other new camera, which looks up the tunnel of 9a. Unfortunately, the camera was aimed a bit low and the reflections from the vegetation affected the exposure, but it's quite a nice shot of the hedgie coming down the tunnel. What we didn't realise until the fourth viewing is that it's joined by a second hedgie.



Both this and the Front camera are on my "Ebay Special" USB capture unit, which can only record a single channel at once, so we manually select the channel, but at least we can see several cameras at once. I left it recording the front when I went to bed, so I've a 2GB capture file to check through.

We had three nest boxes occupied during the day today - 9a with one definite. There may still be another as there have been some triggers, but it seems a little late now.

Nightshift was in 9c, although we aren't sure what happened to her little one - we haven't seen it tonight.

The little hedgie in 9d was very restless during the day and was out as soon at it got dark. It likes to go out for an hour or two then comes back to 9d for a nap.

Little baby was in 9b for a couple of hours during the night, but left. We still think this is the one who stays with Nightshift. but we just get more and more confused. Perhaps she's moved out as well?

Hedgehogs are great climbers. Normally they shuffle along, quite often with no visible means of support, but you can see their feet as they climb in and out of the ATM. The normal route the hedgies use from the lawn to the patio is the ramp at the left. When the babies arrived they found the tops of the steps, but couldn't get down, so we added a few extra bricks and a wooden ramp to make things easier for the little ones. As you can see, they can go up rather well now:



Nightshift is quite capable of using the steps in their original form - they are two courses of housebricks high.