Hedgehog Street autumn newsletter

Photo by Hugh Clark

reg. charity no. 326885

Autumn 2013

reg. charity no. 274206

This is our first ever Hedgehog Street autumn newsletter, composed of some of the highlights from our national campaign over the last six months. As the leaves mellow and the fruits ripen, a range of new challenges for the hedgehogs in your garden come into play.

Many of you will be out in the garden in October with the fork or strimmer, so we are promoting this as a good time to think about wildlife.

We’ve come up with a handy A-Z of Autumn Hedgehog Tips on how to make your garden more wildlife-friendly and help your hedgehog visitors. It’s available to download from the Hedgehog Street website now: www.hedgehogstreet.org/pages/free-autumn-a-z-of-tips.html Get involved in the Wild About Gardens Week (25th-31st October) run by the Royal Horticultural Society and The Wildlife Trusts. During this week you can attend events going on in your local area or undertake your own project, large or small, to make your garden that bit more hedgehogfriendly. Visit the website, www.wildaboutgardensweek.org.uk for more info or to register an activity and be sure to take lots of photos and upload them on the Hedgehog Street galleries to inspire other Champions.

Our Hedgehog Street website itself is also being revamped this month. The look of the site will be freshened up, and the way it works will be tweaked to allow the photos and stories from all of you wonderful Champions to feature more clearly. It will also be better integrated into Twitter and Facebook to allow you to share and like pages with your pals. As part of this revamp we have already added lots of new content: www.hedgehogstreet.org/pages/help-hedgehogs.html – go and have a look and see if you can learn something new about our ‘urchin’.

Hedgehog Street now has advice about how you can help your pets live harmoniously with your local hedgehogs.

Photo by Steve Burke, a Hedgehog Champion from Dorset.

Introducing Emily Thomas I like hedgehogs because... they are unique and completely different from all other British mammals with their coat of spines and they also have the most adorable faces, with bright, beady black eyes and an endearing overbite!

I have just started as the Hedgehog Street Intern. I will be helping answer emails, update the website, engage and communicate with Champions as well as generally supporting Hedgehog Street.

I have a BSc degree in Zoology from the University of Bristol and have just completed my MSc at the University of Reading. My dissertation was on the decline of the European hedgehog in the UK and looking at how effective footprint tunnels are at monitoring them. Footprint tunnels are made up of a triangular plastic tunnel with a plastic insert. A4 paper is attached at either end, with two bands of masking tape covered in black ink on either side of a bowl of food. A hedgehog will wander in to have a feed and then leave a little trail of footprints, pictured to the right, as they leave the tunnel.

Working with my project partner we surveyed 13 sites across West Berkshire. At each site 10 tunnels were put out for five nights. We found hedgehogs were present in seven of our sites. At three of the sites where hedgehogs were found to be present we used live traps to work out how many hedgehogs were living in the area. This meant I was lucky enough to get some hands on experience with the spiny little creatures. We caught 11 hedgehogs all of whom were marked with a small spot of tipex so we knew who they were…and of course they were each given a name! Our hedgehogs were: Hannibal, Hubert, Henrinetta (so called because we found her tangled in some netting), Hamish, Houdini, Hermione, Heidi, Hera, Hugo, Hattie and Howard.

News in brief... 2013 Hibernation Survey A massive thank you to all the Hedgehog Champions who took part in the 2013

Hibernation Survey, run by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS). The data are currently being

analysed, but we already know that it’s been a great year of hedgehog recording, with over 2 300 people submitting more than 24 500 online forms accounting for

over 47 000 hedgehogs being spotted. Almost 93% of the hedgehogs seen were alive.

Similar to the results from last year’s Hibernation Survey, the vast majority of

hedgehogs (91%) were spotted in gardens. Hopefully this year’s data combined with that from last year will give us a much better understanding of the abundance, activity and distribution of hedgehogs in Britain. Thanks to everyone who took

part - you will receive a report about our analysis of the results in November.

Is disease a factor in the decline of Britain’s hedgehogs?

As well as external parasites such as ticks and fleas, hedgehogs are susceptible to a range of internal parasites and diseases, with lungworm and salmonellosis being examples. Hedgehog rehabilitators are all too familiar with these, and sometimes rescued animals seem to succumb to new types of disorders too. Could a disease,

parasite or toxin be implicated in the alarming decline of the hedgehog? What’s a natural level of infection for a wild hedgehog? A new project has been set up to find some answers.

The vets at Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have set up the Garden Wildlife Health (GWH) project which aims to identify and investigate disease threats to

British garden wildlife, focusing on birds, amphibians, reptiles and hedgehogs.

A website has been created which

allows anyone to register and report a wildlife disease incident in their garden. Your record will contribute to a national database of wildlife

disease. In addition, if a freshly dead hedgehog (or any another of the listed

species) is found, it is important that it is made available to the wildlife ©Zoological Society of London

vets at ZSL who may then conduct a

post-mortem examination. Results and

any advice will be relayed to the submitter. Visit www.gardenwildlifehealth.org/

People’s Trust for Endangered Species and British Hedgehog Preservation Society

are collaborating with the GWH partners to promote the project, alongside a range of universities, governmental agencies, and conservation organisations.

A poorly hedgehog is nursed back to health by Glynis Dean, Hedgehog Champion from Cornwall.

Hedgehog Street Hedgehog Street is on YouTube! Now that ‘trail cameras’ (remote video cameras used for filming wildlife) are becoming more and more affordable, they are helping to reveal lots about the secret lives of our wild animals. The footage is hugely valuable since it captures ‘hogs behaviour at nightime and without disturbance - something that would be difficult to observe and document in person.

Hannah Lawson Shot on 808 Keys micro camera #16 with the IR filters removed.

Shows excellent natural behaviour including sent marking and male-male competition for food.

Bruce Weir Shot on SPYPOINT HD-12 Black LEDs game camera Nest building behaviour, above left, is fascinating to see. Hedgehogs and cats, above right, can happily coexist, although hoglets are vulnerable, as they are to most other predators too. Cats will mainly compete for the food bowls left out for hedgehogs by gardeners.

Duncan Richardson Shot on Bushnell trail cam Whilst foxes will opportunistically predate hedgehogs if they get chance, the spiny ball of an adult ‘hog is a decent defence and both these species can happily coexist at quite high densities in our gardens.

Get in touch if you want to share vids: hedgehog@ptes.org