Monday 1 June 2009

Hedgehogs

The two Hedgehogs continue to visit the garden each evening. Last night I only saw Honey. I can tell by her size and by the fact that she ran away at full speed when I went out to try to get some still photos of her. Henry normally stands his ground and waits until I go away so he can resume eating. Honey is having a fine time finding the dried mealworms I had scattered amongst the crushed peanuts.



I still haven't managed to record the loud snuffling which only seems to be made by Henry. I have tried several searches to find out what the sound indicates. It depends which site you read as to what the meaning is. Two places I found which tell of several sounds Hedgehogs make are here and here.

A very interesting blog I found is Hog Blog with many terrific pictures and videos of Hedgehog visitors to a garden. If you are interested in observing them then it is well worth a visit. There I saw activity similar to that seen here where Hedgehogs face each other nose to nose. You will see some quite aggressive behaviour where Hedgehogs charge and bulldoze others out of the way. Not the cuddly, if prickly, creatures we normally think of. There is definitely more to Hedgehog behaviour than meets the eye!

I am still debating whether I have a pair here or an older adult and one of the offspring I saw last year. The snuffling would suggest that it could be more a 'keep away from my territory' than a 'is it time to make babies' type of communication.

7 comments:

  1. Another great video John, I wonder if that might be the answer, that they are parent and offspring, you could well be right there.

    I think there is still so much for us to discover about animal behaviour in general, we humans think we know so much when in fact we really know so little about the creatures we share this lovely planet with. It is wonderful that the scientific community are researching and bringing new facts to us all the time.

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  2. I think you are right Jan. There is still a lot to learn about our common wildlife. The rare and endangered get lots of attention but often the regulars are ignored. This is often where the devoted amateur comes in to their own. (No. Not me. I'm just an interested onlooker.)

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  3. Excellent video again John.
    Think I'll have to invest in one myself ;)
    Couple of good links there too. It would be great to really understand animals.

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  4. Thanks John for the link! It's much appreciated.

    I think ShySongbird hit the nail on the head with the comment about us humans thinking we already know it all.

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  5. Thank you Keith. It is fun to be able to watch a bit of the night life in the garden even if it ends up raising more questions than it answers.

    Thanks for visiting GLW. You have excellent video footage of your Hedgehogs which deserves a wider audience.

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  6. I haven't seen a hedgehog for a couple of years now, they used to be common. I suppose people have such tidy gardens nowadays, and the dreaded slug pellets of course.

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  7. Thank you for visiting Matron. I don't think I would have known about the Hedgehogs this year if Bobby hadn't spotted them. You are probably right about the 'tidy' gardens now where we used to have deep borders with lots of plants and of course gardens are generally much smaller these days.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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