Baby Hedgehogs

Last Tuesday evening my neighbour, Jackie brought her Scottie and Jack Russell for a walk up the lane past my house as she often did. She walked a few yards up the lane to make a phone call leaving the two rips on their own for a few minutes. All of a sudden, Jack Russell dived into the hedge and brought out a brown ball in his mouth, dropping it smartly and then brought out another and another. They were little baby hedgehogs. Neither of us knew what to do. I found a cardboard box, lined it with dry grasses and straw and brought them in. I knew that if we popped them back into the hedge their mother would reject them because of the scent of the dogs. I looked up the RSPCA site on the web. The advice - take them to an animal welfare site, which is fine if you don't live 2 miles from the middle of nowhere, it's not 8pm and the nearest site probably around 50 miles away. I found an old fleece hat, made a nest for them and fed them with warmed up semi skimmed milk through a small syringe. One didn't make it through the night but the other two are doing OK. Hopefully they'll make it and live and eat eat all the slugs munching on my cabbage and lettuce.

Aberystwyth Re-visited

At the beginning of the year, all along the south and west coasts Britain was battered by storms. Seems such a long time ago now. Hard to imagine that only nine months ago, it was all like this.
Aberystwyth on the South Wales coastline was one of the many little towns and hamlets to feel the brunt ....



We live inland about 60 miles away. Last Monday we went out on a day trip. It's funny, when it's winter you can't imagine the summer and in the summer time, winter seems a million light years away.



The sun was shining, but most the holiday makers had packed up and gone home. The children, back in school. The uni and college students not yet back. The boats in the harbour, hunkered down and not a fisherman in sight. The walkway through the castle ruins all but deserted. The last remnants of the wild little pink thrift growing in clumps by the castle wall. Rock pools with fronds of trailing red and green algae and limpets. The sea endlessly swishing as the tide idly ebbed and flowed. You could breathe in the pungent smell of  seaweed trapped on the shore. Just a few of us and the seagulls and I loved it.

Starling Murmuration

Three or four years ago, Tom wrote a blog  on Starling Murmuration and posted this video.


A similar phenomena has happened at Westbury, Shropshire, this winter.  Westbury is a small village four or five miles away from where I live.There is, as far as I know, no near nature conservation area to encourage them, but something must have attracted their attention.  The starlings gather on the edge of dusk, thousands of them. The formations they make are beautiful and the bird song is amazing.

Something Borrowed

Whiskas for Hedgehogs

My son's partner took this great photo of a hedgehog helping himself to her cat's food one night outside her front door. I think it's brilliant, don't you?