Hedgehog House

I started off with an igloo style hedgehog house in the garden for a couple of years, I think starting from 2018 and it was used regularly as an occasional hedgehog nest.

It wouldn’t have been possible to install a camera in this house and also after 2 years it was beginning to wear so I thought to remove it and replace it with the new box.

My first camera equiped hedgehog house was home-made during May 2020. The full design and dimensions are shown below.

A video camera of the type shown below, Green Feathers, was installed in the box to offer a view of the ‘nesting chamber’.

The image quality is good, there are no problems of wireless reception, but a cable needed to be installed and concealed from the house to the box. This required a cable run of around 20m.  (I bought the camera with a 50m extension cable, also shown above). The house was positioned in the corner of the garden and I left a lot of leaves for nesting material.

It was in general a big success, particularly during the spring and summer of 2021 when I had a couple of hedgehog residents who stayed in the nest for several weeks during different periods.

However I had two concerns with this house. Firstly I thought that perhaps the nesting chamber was too small, particularly if I wanted to give myself a chance or attracting a female to use the house as a breeding nest. Also once a hedgehog became established, and the nest of leaves inside the house got bigger, the camera became completely blocked.

Therefore during the winter of 2021-2022 I had another go, making a new, and I hope improved house to overcome these problems.

The camera is behind a plexiglass screen that should hopefully isolate it from the nest itself.

The new house was back in the garden for January 2022 and by March the first hedgehog was having a nose around.