Who's been sleeping in my bed?

...and he's still there!

Two days ago we had 13mm of rain, and the hedgehogs changed their behaviour. As noted in previous posts, Nightshift was very late getting up, and then stayed away the following day. She didn't visit at all during the next night, and so she was missing all day yesterday.

9d responded to her absence by moving in to 9c, her home.



He's been there for a nap on a number of occasions when Nightshift was out, and did get trampled by her a while ago because he was laying down in the tunnel and wouldn't move. Last night, the inevitable finally happened - Nightshift came home to find 9d asleep in her bed.



She went into the bedroom to find him well tucked up in the corner. She tried pushing him out, but he was too far in for her to be able to move him. Unfortunately, we have no sound connected up in the nest boxes, so we crept out and listened and you could just hear a bit of huffing. The pair of them eventually settled down to sleep for a while.



A bit later 9d seems to have taken the hint, as he got up and went back into his own nest.



Nightshift went out later, visiting Indy at the front, even taking a nap in 9f. Nightshift also worked out there are two nest boxes there. Notice how she is too big to sneak under the narrow part of the opening like Indy does.



She did come home and has spent the day in 9c - alone... Except for another brief visit from 9d when he came home! This is a shot from the latest cam - an eBay special, plugged into the DVD recorder. The lack of a timestamp makes finding things difficult.



Alfie spent the evening in and out of 9b and then went out exploring as usual. He was back home in 9b about . He doesn't seem to have been visiting Flatmate in 9a - possibly because Flatmate hasn't been staying in 9a for the last two nights, either. He called back for about an hour in the middle of the night, but dashed off again. A couple of nights ago, the night after Alfie had an awayday in 9f, Alfie had been dashing all over the garden, in and out of the ATM, into 9a, out under the decking, as if he was looking for someone - maybe they've missed each other?

We haven't been getting as many of the "transients" - the hedgehogs who visit, but don't live here - for the last few nights. We were getting two on the ATM together several times each night, but that hasn't happened since the rain. It may be that they are spreading out in search of winter quarters. We will see.


We decided to reposition a couple of the cameras today. When we bought the first cameras we didn't really know what to look for or expect from a camera, and found that the cameras we had bought did not really have enough infra-red range to give a general view of the garden or even the patio. As it turned out, we think we get better results using the cameras for close-up shots, although some of them could do with focusing a little closer than they are. At least they don't burn out the pictures as much as some of the longer-range IR cameras.

The only problem is that close-up cameras only show a small part of the action, and so the number of cameras we have in use has grown somewhat, to the extent that really we don't have the time to check all the video captures! Since the hedgies first appeared after hibernation in April, their habits have changed, and some of the cameras were no longer getting much of the action. On top of that, the bird box we had great hopes for in the spring has only managed to capture a visiting Bumble Bee, a couple of beetles - and a starling using the box as a toilet. Of course, one of the other camera-less bird boxes we set up was taken over by a pair of robins, resulting in the panicked installation of an external camera to cover the entrance. At least the robins successfully raised and fledged six babies, much to our great pleasure and relief.

We have a water bowl and a feeding bowl side by side on the lawn, a couple of yards/metres in front of the ATM. We have no camera coverage, and since the self-set sunflowers have grown we can't even see them from the living room! All we know is that virtually every morning all the water and all of the mealworms have gone. We can't imagine the hedgehogs drinking all of the water, and assume it's the cats - but cats don't like mealworms! So, we have a camera watching...

We have also turned the "Water Feeder" camera round to watch the sunflower clump. Nightshift used to visit this food bowl near the water regularly, but hasn't visited for ages, and on the other hand the long grass round the sunflowers has several distinct tunnels through it, and there is usually at least one fresh poo left there each day.