No more Tinas

Don't worry - not a mass disappearance of all the baby hedgehogs. Quite the reverse, in fact. It just dawned on me that we are no longer referring to the baby hedgehog as Tina. I suppose when we confirmed there were at least four Tinas we gave up. We have no idea how many Tinas there are now.

There is a Tina in 9d. It seems to have moved in as it has been staying for several days now. although it goes out of the garden several times each night. It has a lot of marks on its back.

Nightshift's older Tina is still living with her (we think) although Nightshift seems to be a very liberal mother, letting it go out on its own each night - and letting it have a lie-in at getting up time. It has got a distinctive marking on its rear end, which looks very much like a capital A. It started off as \, became ^ and now looks like the full A. None of the others have recognisable letters on them, so we think it's just an accident.



It actually spent a couple of hours in 9b, giving it a full inspection, but it still went "home" to 9c.





We're not sure about Nightshift's baby Tina, aka Saffy. We think we've seen her several times, since her poorly foot looks larger than usual, but we can't be certain.

There are two Tinas using 9a. One stays all day, the other pops in during the night... except that all-day Tina popped out at lunchtime today. I just glanced the camera under the decking whilst having my lunch, and saw a hedgie. It seems she just got up, and went out. When under the decking she looked as if she was going back in, but changed her mind. She turned up and went into 9a again just after dark.







There is at least one Tina who just uses the garden as a link between the alley and the decking - we think.

Recognition is getting more and more difficult, as they seem to be getting more and more marks on their backs. Even Nightshift had a new identity when she got up tonight. We assume they get the marks trying to squeeze under fences and the like, but we wonder if it could indicate the pending arrival of some late autumn babies in Nightshift's case.

We reinstated the camera at the front to see what was happening, since the mealies seem to be getting a real munching. We repositioned it to view the door to the boiler room, as we seem to be getting a visitor, but can't tell if anybody is in or not. We've seen Nightshift has visited the front three times so far tonight, and each time she went into the boiler room for five or ten minutes. Too short for a nap?

We set up another camera - the 9a Tunnelcam - looking up the tunnel into 9a. There are too many leaves in the frame, which are affecting the automatic exposure, so we need to fix it tomorrow. It's connected to the "ebay special" USB video capture stick. It was very cheap and gives reasonable quality captures, but it has a major limitation. Although it can connect to four cameras, and display pictures from all four at once, in record mode it will only record a single channel, and that stops it displaying the other three cameras. Still, it's useful for monitoring four lesser-used cameras and we can just manually record anything interesting. As it cost less than 1/20 the price of our main recorders, it's a useful addition.