Hedgehog visitor

I once saw hedgehogs quite frequently in and around my garden but I have not seen one for many year (just the occasional road casualty).

So I was really pleased to see this hedgehog on our front garden last night. It was sitting in the lawn looking towards the house.

My wife took out some cat food and the hedgehog came over a eat some of the cat food before heading off into the over-gown flower border in search of some tasty invertebrates.

Hedgehogs have declined drastically and while the exact reason is unknown intensification of agriculture, roads, pesticides and tidy gardens may all play a part. As with many species declines its often a mixture causes.

Connectivity of habitats is also important, even more so for hedgehogs as they may roam 1-2 km in a single night. Our neighbours have had a hedgehog family in their garden for a while. After 8 weeks the young are left to fend for themselves and this is likely to be one of the young hogs.

If you put food out, hedgehogs tend to visit for a top up and still feed on the natural food - so its not a problem. Avoid fish based catfoods as it can give hedgehogs diarrhoea. You can also add meal worm and other tasty treats as hedgehogs are omnivores. You can also provide a bowl of water as drinking water is often hard to find.

While hedgehogs can swim well, if they fall in a swimming pool or raised pond with no area to climb out, a hedgehog will eventually become exhausted and drown. An untidy overgrown area is also perfect for a hedgehog to visit on its travels.

Brickfield Nature Reserve bug hunt

Helped out again at the Friends of Brickfield Nature Reserve fun day event in conjunction with the Lewes Ranger Thyone.

Sadly extreme windy weather meant we had to abandon putting up the marquee which meant we were unable to use the usb cams to project collected invertebrates onto a tv screen.

Even with the poor weather lots of people turned up for the event.

We also collected some creatures from the onsite pond which included mayfly nymph, damselfly nymph, water boatman, juvenile newts etc.

We shared lots of interesting facts about the animals, such as how water boatman have an air bubble for breathing underwater and that they can fly to another pond.

The newt tadpoles were popular and we discussed their gills, how they develop front legs first, that they hunt small prey items such as daphnia and how adult news lay eggs singularly under leaves of pond vegetation.

The main part of the event was the bug hunt. We handed out pots and containers for people to collect creatures and bring them back to be identified and learn something about the animal they had found.

These included bumble bees, woodlouse, 24 and 7 spot ladybird, speckled wood butterflies, spiders, ground beetle, frog hopper, garden snail and much more.

We also found Kentish snails, a black snail beetle, a digger wasp, a nursery web spider, common blue butterflies, cone head grasshopper, red soldier beetle, thick knee flower beetle, common carder bees and yellow field ants.

Despite the weather the day was a great success.

Dragonflies emerging from our garden pond

A busy day and grabbed a coffee to chill our by our garden pond for a while - just in time to see 3 dragonflies Sympetrum striolatum emerge.

Large red damselflies always emerge from our pond each year and after discovering dragonfly nymphs in the pond for the first time last year - pleased to see adults emerge.

Emerging dragonflies

Dragonflies have started to emerge from our garden pond. There are a lot of dragonfly nymphs this year of varying sizes, some very small and will probably emerge next year.

They climb out of the water, up the marginal vegetation. The skin splits and they emerge as a winged adult, leaving behing the nymph skin (called the exuvia).


The damselflies emerged in a similar way earlier in the year.