Kevin’s photo of our little waif in the garden in December
A little under a month ago we spotted a young hedgehog foraging in our garden. It’s unusual to see them out and about during the day and that usually means it’s a hoglet born late in the season who’s not big enough to hibernate yet. We scooped up our prickling friend and found it weighed just over 300g – around half the weight needed for hibernation. Eventually the South Essex Wildlife Hospital said they’d take the hedgehog, so I made the journey over to Orsett with our little waif.
One of them uncurled enough for us to catch a glimpse of a shiny nose
Yesterday we received a call to say our hedgehog (which we now know is female) had grown to a healthy 650g so we could come and collect her. We also agreed to take on an additional hog which has been rescued and fed up, so today we made the journey again to pick them up.
When we got home we popped them both in our hedgehog house with some fresh bedding and left them in peace to get used to their new home. We were instructed to shut them in until darkness fell, so we pressed the box in which we store the birds’ suet balls into service to cover the doorway. Having restocked our feeding station with food and put out a dish of water I then removed the box after dark and left them to go foraging. I’ve put out our trail camera so hopefully we might catch some footage of them when they emerge – watch this space!
2 January 2022