Hedgehogs now an endangered species

[jojo]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20070828/tuk-hedgehogs-added-to-endangered-list-dba1618_1.html

I love them! I know they visit the garden and I'll do what I can to help them here. I have a perfect excuse now to not bother to cut the lawn, because it says that some species are now more endangered by the reduced amount of available food in manicured garden. I'd had to that the habit nowadays of concreting over front gardens.

I also have edge sparrows in the gardens. I love their squabblings in the spring.

I am glad the lawn mower has died on me

 

[Shewie]

Peace to the little spikey dudes

We used to have one in our garden which I enjoyed feeding the slugs to, come to think of it I haven`t seen it this year yet.

 

[Toadflax]

Now there's an idea...

...we have a hedgehog that I can hear most evenings and do see quite often...

...and we seem to have an infestation of slugs this year - I've got beer traps all over the garden, and they get choked with vile slimy bodies most days that I have to fish out while trying not to retch. If I just caught the slugs and fed them direct to the hedgehog...


Geoff

 

[gregorach]

Not on the bleedin' Western Isles they're not... 'Tis a shame though - they are kinda cute.

 

[KAE1]

Plenty around here. Its a funny thing, the balance of nature - hedgehogs get blamed for eating ground nesting eggs and chicks - badgers have been blamed as the only mammal that will kill and eat hedgehogs.

 

[SOAR]

Glad to see that they are endangered we had one in the shed last year he made a bed in some loft insulation we had lying around, I showed my brother in laws little girl as she had never seen one before she loved him and was asking all sorts of questions, she even named him Horrace.

 

[Toddy]

My garden is a mini jungle......maybe why I get hedgehogs Personally I can confirm that it's a great excuse not to manicure lawns and borders They terrorise the moggie though

I did get furious with a friend last year who found, one after the other, five baby hedgehogs drowned in her pond. It would apparantly spoil the look of her pond to even secure a stick in it that they could crawl out on Stupid, selfish, thoughtless, cruel......

The problem with the hedgehogs in the Western Isles is that they're not native and really upset a fragile balance for the seabirds, and have become a real nuisance.

The story goes that they were deliberately, and maliciously, introduced. Some one wrote to the Council requesting that all the cattle grids there have little ramps inserted so that hedgehogs could get out. A polite reply was sent pointing out that while they would agree in theory, there were no hedgehogs in the Western Isles. A few weeks late the reply came back, "Ha ha ha, well there are now!"
Apocryphyl? I don't know, but that's the gossip.

Toddy

 

[hedgepig]

Hmmm, pigs belong in certain places and not in others (i.e. where ground nesting birds a threatened), but it is sad to see so many dead on the roads. I used to live in rural Wiltshire and regularly fed the locals (hedgepigs that is, not the "locals"), it was dispiriting to count the number of casualties on the roads.

 

[locum76]

we had three die of mysterious causes at work. they just curled up and gave up in the polytunnels.

 

[leon-1]

We have about three that visit the garden on a regular basis, infact since I have been here it is rare for us not to see one in the garden of a night. Tonight we had one that was quite cheeky as he wandered around the garden quite happily.