Hedgehogs!

tigerfish
tigerfish Forum Participant Posts: 1,362
1000 Comments
edited October 2016 in Wildlife, Nature & the Great Outdoors #1

I was reading yesterday about a survey that is being carried out regarding Hedgehogs, and I realised that it has been a very - very long time since I have seen one.

I remember the days when sad little piles of flesh & blood were a common sight on our roads, but not nowadays!  I don't think that that has been the reason for the dreadful decline in their numbers although it cannot have helped.  I suspect that the real cause is more likely to be a loss of their habitat connected with building development, and also the indiscriminate use of slug pellets which not only poisened the slugs but also the hedgehogs that ate the slugs!

Personally I would love to see the return of those lovely little animals, I do hope that they make it. We are losing so much of our wildlife!

TF

Comments

  • Bakers2
    Bakers2 Forum Participant Posts: 8,192 ✭✭✭
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    edited October 2016 #2

    We hadn't had hedgehogs for ages but I'm delighted to report we have at least one now . I try to keep a wildlife friendly garden and have concrete gravel boards under which I have I scooped some soil in several places. After chatting to neighbours I've
    persuaded them to do the same, our original fences were pallins, when the houses were built 70 or so years ago, and we grew shrubs, kept the shrubs. Over the last few years many of us have had to replace them - nothing lasts these days and close boarded
    fences have been the choice.

    Personally I'm delighted to see them again and my slug population isn't but I have to agree tigerfish I rarely see a squashed one these days which probably means there are a lot less around to get squashed.

    I do see lots of badgers dead on the road, along with foxes and deer which suggests bigger populations but much damage to vehicles.  Sadly as we left the M11 and joined A120 on Friday afternoon a deer sat quietly in the outside lane with a leg at an awful
    angle. Well done to the cars protecting it. I do hope it was dispatched as painlessly as possible fairly soon after we saw it. The vehicle it hit was badly damaged but repairable at a cost unlike the deer.

  • Swifty 123
    Swifty 123 Forum Participant Posts: 100
    edited October 2016 #3

    We had a hedgehog in our garden regularly this summer and we both agreed we hadn't seen one either alive or dead for ages. We saw the piece on the news the other day saying that there had been a big survey so I went on the Internet and was able to log our
    sighting on there, the website is called 'Hedgehogstreet.org' if anyone wants to find out more, bless them, they are beautiful little creatures that are in steep decline.

  • Natasha2
    Natasha2 Forum Participant Posts: 306
    100 Comments
    edited October 2016 #4

    We have regularly seen a hedgehog in the garden but this year we were lucky to have four of them. 

    Mummy hedgehog and her babies.  Very very cute. 

    I keep reading that hedgehogs are in decline but I have friends who also have seen them in their gardens.

     

  • Tammygirl
    Tammygirl Club Member Posts: 7,957 ✭✭✭
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    edited October 2016 #5

    We have one in the garden, comes out most nights and drinks from the bird bath (up turned black rubber dustbin lid) I have a piece of broken flagstone as a little step for it, which it uses. It did have a nest/bed under the shed unfortunatley we have taken
    down the old shed and put up a new one, its raised off the ground so I'm hoping it will go back and re-make its nest/bed. It will need to be quick its getting colder here by the day.  We often see them dead on the roads in the spring/summer time, I think we
    must be a good area for them.

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