29th August! - **SAVE THE DATE**
For all of you who are fans of our prickly friends, or who would like to learn more about how we can help them thrive, we will be holding a Hedgehog Afternoon on Sunday 29 August as part of another exciting Watlington Art Trail event across the bank holiday weekend.
Ecologist and hedgehog expert, Hugh Warwick, will host this afternoon and will be on hand to answer all your questions, judge a hedgehog cake competition and there will also be fun hedgehog-related family activities on offer. The art trail weekend, run by WCAG, WEG and Watlington ArtsHUB, will also include a programme of talks and activities for all the family. Further details will be published nearer the time.
Call out for Photos for Art Installation
If you have created a hedgehog highway hole in your fence, or set up a feeding station or hedgehog house in your garden, we’d really like to see a photo to include in a community art installation. Please send your photos to andrea.brewer_sculpture@yahoo.com.
Photography : Zoe Broughton
Hedgehog Awareness Leaflets
2-8 May this year was Hedgehog Awareness Week, and as part of that the British Hedgehog Preservation Society issued some free information leaflets. Some of you may receive these in your letterboxes in the next few weeks, as we have some young volunteers from the WCAG Youth Group and some local children who will be delivering them, so look out for those.
Hedgehog Activity in the summer
Right now is the time when hedgehogs give birth to their young, called hoglets, so this a busy time for mother hedgehogs who must find food to feed them. You may spot mother hedgehogs out and about during the day, which they can do at this time of year to find food while their hoglets are sleeping. Seeing a hedgehog out during the day is usually an indicator they are sick or injured and may need rescuing, but in June/July this is not always the case. Therefore, please check that any hedgehog you spot looks healthy before deciding to take it to a rescue centre, as you may be separating it from its hoglets.
If you’d like to help, you could:
1. Cut a 13cm diameter hole in your fence to allow hedgehogs to wander through your garden and find food.
2. Put out bowls of fresh water each evening
3. Put out some hedgehog food to help mother hedgehogs feed their young (this must only be special hedgehog food or cat/dog food NOT bread or milk).
4. Take extra care to check for hedgehogs in overgrown parts of the garden before strimming your garden to avoid injuring them.
DID YOU KNOW?
Hedgehogs cannot spread fleas to you or your pets.This is an urban myth, as the fleas on hedgehogs are species-specific and cannot jump to other hosts.