A new hedgehog has moved into the house, and here he/she is.
I can’t be 100% sure, I’m afraid I didn’t have quite so much time this week to monitor the nest activity in complete detail, but I think that the last time the big adult male stayed in the house was last Saturday, 27th March.
In total it had stayed for around a week before moving on, remember they roam over quite a big area.
My main concern was that because the nest had already been used other hedgehogs would be put off. I saw lots and lots of hedgehogs poking their nose it but then running off.
Then yesterday morning the new hedgehog moved it. It stayed all day yesterday, and then came back again this morning after spending the night out and about.
When it came back this morning it spent some time bringing in lots of fresh leaf bedding material before again bedding down for the day. This time I had a camera on the entrance of the nest to capture the nest building activity. The whole process took 20 minutes, a bit too long to sit through, but a short 1 minute sequence is shown below.
You can see that the hedgehog gathered lots of leaf material in it’s mouth from the surroundings. These are leaves which I gather up and dump in the garden during the autumn. I do it because it’s good for the garden and a great resource for the hedgehogs, don’t tidy up those leaves, nature loves a mess.
This new hedgehog is a little smaller than the last one, maybe 1 year old, but it does handily have a very distinctive mark, a kind of moustache, on it’s nose, so fairly easy to identify. I’m not sure but I think it might be a female this time, which would be a nice change.
Will it stay and if so for how long? The last occupant stayed on alternate days for around a week before moving on. It will be interesting to compare with this hedgehog, especially if it is a female.
I’m still trying to keep the live cameras active and as ever they can be found here. With the change of the clocks the peak time in the hedgehog feed station is now around 21:00 French time, and I guess it will get gradually later as the we head towards June.
Chatou Nature Blog 