THIS time of year you can begin to welcome hedgehogs out of hibernation and into your gardens. After a winter dozing they’ll be very hungry and need to put on weight for mating with first litters appearing in May.

I love hedgehogs but am amazed at how popular they are: they are not furry nor friendly, don’t look at us and don’t welcome being touched. They are prickly in every sense of the word and they tend to host fleas…but don’t we just love them?

Maybe it’s because they are so unlike anything else we have visiting our gardens.

Recent advice on leaving autumn leaves and creating gaps under fences benefits hogs as well as the insects, worms and beetles they feed on.

Overnight a hedgehog can travel several miles on it’s search of food, mates and shelter.

Originally, perhaps, hedgehogs were not nocturnal but over the centuries, they found it wiser to sleep during daylight , safe from predation, and emerge at night.

Although perfectly capable of finding their own nooks and crannies to sleep in and nest, we can help by providing boxes, but don’t be disappointed if they are not used or only used intermittently. They do tend to move from one sleeping place to another….even during hibernation they may wake for a few hours and move on. Although it is very tempting to peek in your box it is probably not a good idea if you want them to hang around and not waste precious energy building a new home.

We have a feeding station with water and hog food reached down a small tunnel inaccessible to cats, also partial to hog food! A trail camera checked every morning usually shows multiple visits but we have yet to get any good at telling one hedgehog from another so we may have six visiting or one visiting six times. I dislike the idea of marking hogs backs which I feel is disrespectful as well as making them more visible to predators.

One video we cherish shows a hog carefully rolling a slug on paving to get rid of the slime before eating it. Hogs coming to feed at the same time show a clear pecking order, aggressively pushing each other about. Prickly indeed!

They are fairly solitary until mating times when they can be heard loudly snuffling around each other but mostly they not only dislike humans, they seem to dislike each other.

So please consider your emerging hedgehogs eager for food and shelter and enjoy watching their antics.

wharfedale-nats.org.uk