Disappearing hogs

No hedgehogs at all Saturday or Sunday night.  Hoglet was in the hog house during the day on Saturday but he's not been seen since.  Despite the nice weather this weekend my hogs may have decided to hibernate.  If that's correct then unfortunately not in my garden.

This could be due to the Landlord sending someone round on Saturday to kill all the weeds.  I just managed to stop him spraying the toxic substance anywhere near the hog house.  However hogs have a highly developed sense of smell and that could be why they are not in the garden.

Sunday morning produced a surprise.I was watching the birds when I suddenly saw a bird fly around the back of the house opposite.  As it banked round I could clearly see tapered wings = Falcon.  The bird changed direction and headed straight towards me. I had a wonderful eye to eye (through binoculars) moment with the bird which was very clearly a male Peregrine.  It flew up and over the flat.  I registered the sighting on the Sussex Ornithological website and later discovered that two Peregrines are being seen on the Crawley College building.

Above is a picture of a Peregrine at Pulborough Brooks. 

9th October

Hoglet is fast asleep in the hog house again this morning.  Both his and Mrs Hog's behaviour has changed.  They are not coming in for food as frequently.  Although the weather is warm this weekend it is due to get  colder next week.  It is thought that Hedgehogs can tell the weather up to 10 days ahead. So they may be getting ready to hibernate.

When I got home from work yesterday I managed to find the stolen food bowl in a garden down the road from us.  It was fine so after being cleaned it went straight back out with food last night.

Got some good footage last night.  In the video below it looks like the foxes are talking to each other.  I think that they are this years cubs which means they should leave to find their own territories soon.

Thief!!!!!!!

In the early hours of this morning a theft took place from my garden.  One of my green food bowls was taken.  So far the bowl has not been recovered.  Reward offered of £1.75 for the return of the bowl (that's what it is going to cost to buy a new one).  The whole incident was caught on my CCTV camera.  Therefore I have a full description of the culprit and they can be identified.  I will be watching carefully for any repeat offence.

Video of the crime being committed below:

For obvious reasons the theft has not been reported to the Police.  I don't think that the police have the technology to take paw or snout prints.

3rd October - update

Well Hoglet has decided to carry on using the second hog house to sleep in.  He's not using it every day.  Originally it seemed he was staying every third day.  However it now appears that he is timing his stays around bad weather.  I knew that Friday 1st October and Sunday 3rd October would both have heavy rain.  On both days Hoglet stayed all day in the hog house.

I cleaned it out on Saturday 2nd October as there was a fair bit of poo.  I relined the box with newspaper and added loads of dust free hay.  Sunday morning I checked and it didn't look like anything had been in the house at all.  Before Hoglet had flattened the bedding down and laid on top of it.  I did carefully move a couple of strands of the hay and suddenly realised that Hoglet was underneath.  He had burrowed under the hay. With all the heavy rain it was quite nice to know that he was safe and warm.

A strange Magpie is coming into the garden.  It has a lot of feathers missing on it's head and particularly around it's eyes.  At first I was concerned that it was blind.  However it can clearly see and is able to fly and is feeding.  The problem is that two other Magpies are attacking it on a regular basis.  I have no idea why.  It could be that they regard my garden as their own food store as they are down every day.

Some interesting fox behaviour recently.  The video below was a fight over food and it appears that it is two cubs involved.  Cubs start to move away from their parents in October so it will be interesting to see how the vistitors to the garden change.