Always something different

About the only thing we can say for certain about the hedgehogs is that we can't be certain about the hedgehogs. They do seem to be creatures of habit, but there is always a little random element to them, and just as you think they have settled into a new routine, they change it again.

Nightshift was late getting up - well over an hour after Alfie and 9d and they were getting on half an hour late. She nipped out of the garden, but came back into 9c for a nap. She was using the various garden feeders and looked as though she would be staying - but she didn't come back to spend the day in 9c. She was nowhere to be seen at the front, either, so she's got a new round at the moment.



Alfie was hanging around 9b for hours, in and out for a feed every three-quarters of an hour or so, but he spent a lot of time in 9b tunnel, with his legs splayed out, so he would seem to be warm, although it doesn't seem that warm out. Later on, a somewhat dishevelled, heavily marked little hedgie appeared on the 9f feeder, and it could well have been Alfie. He was eating a long time without making too much impact on the food, which seems quite like Alfie. Nightshift just hoovers up everything.



9d had a shock when he returned to 9d after we'd cleaned it and added more straw - he could barely get into the tunnel for the straw and seemed to be contemplating giving up, but he bulldozed his way in.



We're not sure we've seen Flatmate in 9a for a night or two. We have run through the video on fast forward, and didn't see him, but if they zoom in it's quite easy to miss them. Normally you can see their "wake" in that the straw is disturbed, but there's so little straw in 9a tunnel at the moment they can go in without disturbing it much.

We did have a funny moment, although at the same time it did give cause for concern over the poor hedgie, as he got stuck on a fallen twig - it came rather close to his eye.



The alley seems to be an ideal feature for the hedgehogs. It provides rear access to the gardens for the houses to our left on our road and the next road. It ends in a gate half-way along our fence. The gate leads into the decked garden, and the house owners don't use it. In fact, it seems that no-one in any of the houses use it, as it is very overgrown. For more than two garden widths it is completely overhung by trees and bushes, and the only way for a human to get along is on your hands and knees. We know, because that is how we had to go the last time we went there, to install the steps on the alley side of the ATM. The alley camera is on a wooden stand and we lowered it into the ally on a length of string. So, it means that the hedgehogs and cats have the place to themselves, and it provides a very neat little motorway linking all of the gardens. As the autumn is progressing we can see a lot of leaves have dropped in there, and we have seen a few twigs, as in this case, but we feel that as long as there is no human interference we should just let things develop naturally. We just hope one of the houses doesn't change hands to someone who decides to tidy the alley up. We don't use it, as we have access from the side of the house.

Now for a cute moment, a little hedgehog having a drink:



The ATM camera was knocked over by a cat about 4 am. As you may have noticed, we have a few cameras in the garden, covering the action "hot spots" and some are fixed to fences or inside the nest boxes, but a number are fixed to large wooden blocks, to allow them to be moved around easily. The ATM cam is one of those, and although the hedgies sometimes knock it, it is unusual for it to be completely knocked over by a cat. We only caught the slightest of glimpses of the cat, too - it didn't go through the ATM, so it must have had a shock when it tripped over the camera.

On the non-hedgehog front, we had a very quiet day with the starlings. We usually have a couple of flocks of around 20 birds arrive in the morning, the first maybe an hour after daylight, the second shortly after. Today we did have a little bit of squabbling on the window feeder, but not much, and I was surprised to find the mealworms had hardly been touched when i went out to feed the hedgehogs about 6 pm.

Still, it has given the other birds a chance, and we had quite a lot of blue tit activity - normally they are dodging the starlings.