Pleased to say I’ve just captured plentiful amounts of hedgehog footage on my remote camera, having not seen a live one in my home region since 2007. After glimpsing it briefly in my parents garden a few days ago during the afternoon, I put out some wet cat food for it on the patio, in the hope of seeing it up close. Being naturally nocturnal, seeing it at this time indicates that it’s probably suffering from an illness, although it’s not lost its appetite and is moving around normally. It looks a tad underweight, however, it’s likely to be a juvenile and will not have yet reached its optimum size. Having mated during May and June, now is the time when the offspring move out from their nest to find their own territory.

The species has been in sharp decline in Britain over the last few decades, primarily due to the fragmentation and deterioration of their habitat – an issue I explored in a previous blog post, Demise of the Hedgehog. The garden this one finds itself in holds a variety of plant life and an abundance of insects, and is not overly manicured with pesticides and poisonous slug pellets like so many suburban gardens. Did you know they can roam up to 3km in one night and have home ranges of up to 30 hectares?

An ideal garden habitat for them would include an endless supply of earthworms, beetles and moths, a small supplementary supply of food in the run up to hibernation between November and March, the creation of stick or leaf piles and generally wilder areas, together with easily accessible passageways between gardens. Even the removal of a CD-sized section of fencing can enable them to move freely, looking for different sources of food.