HogBlog
Hedgehog Survey Catch Up (01/02/2012)
The hedgehog survey has now been running for eight months, thanks to all of you who have submitted records to us, keep them coming in!
The map below shows all the online and postal results we have received to date.
Distribution of hedgehog records collected from our survey as of January 2012.
There are a number of things that the map illustrates rather well.
Firstly, the majority of sightings are clustered around major settlements and roads. Sightings away from major settlements are pretty scarce, illustrating one of the big problems with biological recording; that you get an uneven and incomplete picture of species distribution due to more people being in one place. The lack of records over The Lammermuir, Moorfoot and Pentland Hills, all areas with only sparse human habitation, also supports this idea.
However, there are some notable exceptions. Northeast of Melrose is the small village of Gordon, where there has been a cluster of hedgehog sightings. The reason for this concentration of records is recorder effort: the majority of these sightings where made by one Graeme Wilson, who just happens to be TWICs Centre Manager. Thanks Graeme!
The villages of Kirk Yetholm, Longformacus and Morebattle also seem to have a concentration of sightings around them. Again, this seems to be the result of the hard work of a few recorders either in or close to these villages.
Some minor roads seem to have a higher number of sightings than nearby major roads, for example the B7009 (southwest of Selkirk), the B711 (west of Hawick) and the B712 (southwest of Peebles). It could be expected that larger busier roads would have the greater number of sightings as there are more people using them. However, on these roads people are travelling at speed and are consequently less likely to be recording wildlife.
There doesn’t appear to be any major settlement without any sightings whatsoever suggesting that hedgehogs can be found all over the Lothians and Borders, or at least near to most major settlements. As for the spaces in between, it looks like further investigation is needed.
Unseasonal Hedgehog Sightings (01/02/2012)
As we move into the New Year and the weather starts to get colder hedgehogs should be tucked up in their hibernacula (the nests they build to hibernate in during the winter). However, some of you have seen them out and about over the last few months. This unseasonal activity is most likely due to the mild weather we had in November and December; it was the mildest December since 2006 according to the Met office.
If you have noticed any unseasonal wildlife sightings, please let us know.
Having Hedgehogs for Supper (17/08/2011)
Many of you have been spotting hedgehogs into your garden and very kindly leaving out wee bowls of food for your prickly visitors. Mostly, this has been a little dog or cat food, though some of you have been making the common mistake of feeding them bread and milk.
In the wild, hedgehogs have a pretty varied diet including slugs, frogs, small mammals and even birds eggs. Some of you have even seen them eating spilt bird seed too. Although their diet is mainly made up of insects and other invertebrates they seem quite happy to eat seeds, so they would be considered to be “Omnivores”.
However, even with this varied diet, milk isn’t particularly good for them. Like most mammals, once they have past infancy they are no longer able to digest milk very well, and even in infancy may only be able to properly digest milk from their mums. However, whilst milk isn’t particularly good for hedgehogs it is unlikely to kill them and will probably just give them an upset stomach for a few days.
Hedgehog's diet broken down into percentages. Pie chart courtesy of http://europeanhedgehog.webs.com.
The natural hedgehog diet (source http://europeanhedgehog.webs.com)
Hedgehog shelters normally feed hedgehogs’ dog or cat food, wet or dry, as these contain roughly the same nutrients that they would normally get from foraging in the wild. However, on releasing the hedgehogs they have found they had problems with their teeth. They thought that this is probably because their normal diet includes the tough shells of insects and snails, which may help to keep their teeth clean. One shelter tried to compensate for this by mixing ground up egg shells into the food they were feeding the hedgehogs, which seemed to show some improvement. One company has produced a commercial brand of hedgehog food called “Spike’s Dinner”, although whether they prefer this to the leading brands of dog or cat food is unknown.
A shallow bowl of water is always welcomed by our spiny friends, though make sure that it is shallow and that you check it regularly as they are unlikely to appreciate being stuck in a bowl of water all night!
For further information on attracting and feeding hedgehogs, please go to: http://europeanhedgehog.webs.com/attracthedgehogs.htm.
Welcome to the HogBlog! (10/08/11)
As part of The Wildlife Information Centre’s Hedgehog Survey we will be producing a weekly “HogBlog” to keep you updated on how the survey is progressing. In the future we will also be adding links to other sources of information, photos of sightings and much more!
Records have been coming in thick and fast over the last few months with over 400 records submitted so far. The majority of these have been made through our online recording form, although some interesting submissions have come in by from our hedgehog postcard scheme.
Have you seen these postcards?
One such record stated that the recorder had never seen any hedgehogs in their village. However, several other recorders have submitted sightings from the same village and the surrounding area. So even if you haven’t seen any in your local area recently, you never know when one might appear. Many sightings have been made in recorders back gardens, either early in the morning of around dusk. Records of dead hedgehogs, seen by the side of roads, have also been coming in, although I’m happy to tell you that so far a lot more live hedgehogs have been seen than dead ones.
What’s that scuttling through the undergrowth? (Photo courtesy of Westwood)
“Please remember, don’t forget...”
Just a quick reminder that the hedgehog survey that we are conducting is restricted to the Lothians and Borders as we have had a number of submissions from outside this area, a couple as far afield as Wiltshire! While we appreciate all your submissions, those recorded outside of the Lothian and Borders area will not be included in our results, although we may be passing our results on to other interested parties, after getting your permission to do this first, of course. If you do live outside the Lothian and Borders area and want to submit a hedgehog sighting in your area, the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) has a survey running called “Hogwatch” which is collecting records for the whole of the UK.
So next time your go out and about or even just looking out the window, keep an eye out for our spiny friends and let us know.
Jamie Gibson (TWIC Volunteer)
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