wildlife Prickles in a pickle JUDY THOMSON together with her partner Alan, from Stoke Fleming near Dartmouth, manage ‘Prickles in a Pickle’ a home based hedgehog rescue that takes in injured, poorly and underweight hedgehogs for care and release, plus other animals and bird too. Judy tells us more...
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O misquote a well-known film, ‘If you build it, they will come’ certainly applies to us. As with many people that fall into wildlife rescue, we found that it found us rather than the other way around. I have always been animal mad and constantly bringing broken feathered or furred souls’ home to be mended. When I arrived home with a Tawny Owl, my Mother uttered the immortal words: “I would have thought you would have grown out of this by now!”, I was 31 at the time. I am now in my 60th year and my passion for wildlife and especially hedgehogs, has increased rather than diminished. My partner, Alan, comes from good old-fashioned Devon farming stock. His views on some issues have been different to mine but let us just say that some of these views have mellowed in time! His knowledge of the countryside and all the creatures that live within it knows no bounds. Plus, he is good at making various homes, houses, and pens. Between us we make a decent team.
The week we decided to move in together brought about an incident that was to change everything for us in the future, we did not know this at the time! This was 12 years ago. I was carrying out a spring clean of the stables we rented when my shavings fork picked up a nesting hedgehog and her 4 tiny hoglets. All I knew was that I had to put them immediately back where they came from and leave well alone. Hedgehog mothers do not take kindly to disturbance. I was concerned that they may be abandoned and perish, so Alan and I kept watch over the situation, from a distance for a couple of days. Our worst fears came to fruition on the second morning when we found distressed hoglets scattered all over the stable ‘peeping’ for mum. We gathered them up, put them back in the nest and rechecked in the evening. They were all out of the nest again, cold, and only 2 of them. We sorted through the rest of the shavings, like the graded grainers on the flour advert, with the aid of a head torch but could not find the other 2. We took them home,
warmed them up and with the aid of a glass ear dropper, some kitten milk, and the will to get them to live, we awoke every 2 hours through the night to feed and toilet them. We learned a lot from these little creatures, Piglet and Roo we called them. They grew up and left home and the rest as they say is history. We had no idea at this point how dire things were for the humble hedgehog. In the 1950s there was an estimated 30million, we are now down to our last 500,000 approximately. A high proportion of this loss has been in the last 2 decades. When you consider that out of every nest of babies, usually between 3 and 6, only 1 will survive to adulthood. They are sexually mature by their second year and in the wild live to about 3 or 4 years if they are lucky. Add to these poor odds the obstacles put in front of them and survival, it is no wonder we have lost so many. Roads, pesticides, herbicides, tiny non interconnecting gardens with no wild areas, garden machinery, modern agricultural practice, badgers, global warming to name only some.
Ironically, it seems that ‘new build’ estates may hold the key to many wildlife species being able to thrive. Integral bat and Swift boxes, hedgehog highways and built in wildlife corridors are some of the things designers are having to incorporate into their plans. ‘Prickles in a Pickle’ was created to give us a recognisable name. For years we had been just quietly helping hedgehogs and other wildlife, out of our own pockets. As we got busier and busier, we learned more and more by attending courses, networking with other rescues, reading and researching. I am lucky to have a lot of transferrable skills as I am a Registered Nurse, this has helped tremendously. Last year was phenomenal, the number of hedgehogs needing help was increasing day by day and this year we decided to register as a charity. It came to the point that I was literally working to look after the hedgehogs. l You can find Prickles in a Pickle on Facebook.
Caught on camera at Sharpham
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OXES, a tawny owl and a hedgehog are amongst the creatures caught unawares by hidden cameras on Sharpham Estate, around the site of the Sharpham Trust’s rewilding project which began earlier this year. The Trust near Totnes was awarded £177,400 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to make more space for wildlife and take action for nature in a three-year project called Sharpham Wild for People. The grant will help in turning the Sharpham Estate organic, re-wilding parts of its historic landscape and helping more people engage with the nature there – from members of the public to students of conservation learning to use camera traps. “These first pictures of hedgehogs are amazing because as far as we know this is the first record of them being this far into the estate for over 20 years.” said Simon Roper, from Ambios Ltd, the nature conservation & education organisation which deployed the cameras via its trainees. “Although our rewilding project has only just begun it is so encouraging to get this image of an animal likely to benefit from our future work in restoring nature. Sharing these pictures is a step towards connecting people with nature,” he added.
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An important aspect of the project Sharpham Wild for People is the exploration of organic farming techniques such as less-intensive grazing, in order to support biodiversity. Ambios Ltd already operates Lower Sharpham Farm, an organic farm on the Sharpham Estate, and has just signed a tenancy to take over a further 50 acres of Sharpham parkland, which will be restored to parkland and wood pasture (a habitat with trees that would have characterised Sharpham parkland at the time of its design, in 1762). An additional 137 acres of land has been leased to farmer David Camp for organic conversion. “A key mission for Sharpham is to care for wildlife and enable people to connect with our natural world,” said Trust Director Julian Carnell. “Because of this project, almost all the estate land will be managed organically which has proven benefits for wildlife,” he said. The project was to include school visits, public events, volunteering & training opportunities this summer and the pandemic has meant that these have been postponed. However, the Trust hopes to start some of these in September, and is pressing ahead with other project goals such as introducing livestock, fencing and surveying wildlife.
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