The decline of an old garden favourite

A busy agenda almost put paid to any plans of venturing out this weekend, with family visiting and my eldest sons 6th birthday party on the horizon. I was up against it in terms of finding a small window to escape the house for a couple of hours, but late Sunday afternoon after surviving the birthday party and building my second Lego creation of the weekend - a fine twin winged Bi-plane. I hot footed it over to Wanstead Park for a quick check of the lakes in hope of seeing any returning Swallows or Martins. Once at the park and putting my best listening skills to the test, I soon picked up the song of a Blackcap, Chiffchaff and then a Willow Warbler. It was when I was listening to the Willow Warbler I could hear the rustle of leaves in a patch of sparse brambles behind me, at first I dismissed this as probably a grey squirrel searching for last autumns buried acorns or even a blackbird turning over the leaves in search of earthworms or slugs, but as the rustle continued I became a bit more intrigued and couldn't resist trying to find who or what was creating this noise! As I walked closer to the area I could see the leaves moving, half expecting a blackbird to give its alarm call and fly out of the brambles I was surprised to see what looked like a mammal - a rat was my first thought but as I got closer and moved a few old leaves and twigs to my surprise a hedgehog appeared, sniffing its nose in the air! This spiky little fella probably only recently out of winter hibernation seemed to be oblivious of me standing within only a couple feet and instead of curling up tightly into a ball upon discovery, carried on searching through the fallen leaves, presumably looking for his next meal. After watching him forage for a couple of minutes I lost sight of him as he went deeper into the undergrowth - although I could still hear him.

It's not until you notice something you haven't seen for a while, whether this be a mammal, bird or insect that you stop and try to remember the last time you did, and I tried to recall the last time I had seen a hedgehog, thinking back it must have been over two years ago on a farm in Norfolk - which just goes to show how scarce these once common garden mammals are becoming!

We have all read or heard stories in the press about the loss of wildlife in our gardens due to the lack of habitat and change in gardening methods effecting our bees, butterflies and song birds, however hedgehogs are equally in decline. Through our paving of once grassed front gardens to create driveways to enable us to park our beloved cars onto, making stronger boundary fences for our back gardens using bricks or wooden fence panels to ensure that perfect divide between you and the neighbouring garden, or the preference to have a tidy and well kept plot with manicured lawns and perfectly weeded flower beds but unfortunately conforming to these ideas has only added to the decline of natural homes for hibernating hedgehogs, thus reducing their natural food resources and hugely restricting their movements between our gardens in the quest for food - I'm as guilty as the next person but unfortunately this has had a huge impact on our much loved spiky friends.

So what can we do? "Hedgehog Street - City of Wildlife" is a great initiative to gets us home owners thinking about hedgehogs, not just individuals but whole streets and even communities potentially coming together to create homes and habitats hedgehogs require to thrive and make a welcome return to our gardens once again.

I urge you to take a look at the link below and read all about Hedgehog Street and the work they are doing in trying to increase awareness of the plight of hedgehogs by encouraging us to change the way we see our gardens. See if you can't make a small change to the way you garden or maybe next time you think about repairing that broken fence panel, leave a small 15cm gap to allow a hedgehog to come and go or even better still, replace that wooden fence with native hedging plants like Hawthorn, Blackthorn, Hazel, Birch and Beech all of which, in time, will not only benefit commuting hedgehogs but also create cover, homes and food for all kinds of visiting garden wildlife.

http://www.hedgehogstreet.org/pages/hedgehog-street.html


I couldn't resist adding a couple of pictures of my wonderful Lego creation - I secretly had fun building it!

Take off!

Engines on