We recently moved house, from a flat in the centre of Norwich (a fine city) to a small house just on the outskirts. The reasons for this were that we needed a bit more space and also the flat wasn’t really practical any more. Although being in the centre is great, you pay a premium and we didn’t really use town that often. In addition, there were a few issues with the flat itself, not least that it was overshadowed and didn’t get that much sunlight. Those were the reasons my girlfriend wanted to move, and she persuaded me with the promise of birds and a wildflower meadow in a small patch of grass in the garden, as well as fields and ponies across the river.
Needless to say her persuasion worked, and I am writing this from our two-bedroom, mid-terrace, gardened house. There are birds, flowers, and insects to boot. But the real treat for me was on our first night here. We had bought a build-your-own bird-table (“simple” construction, supposedly!) Having managed to finish the construction just after 11pm, I opened the back door to put it out. To my surprise I was greeted with the sound of snorts and sniffles drifting through the darkness. It took me a few seconds to realise that I was not alone out here. Using the torch on my smart phone, I scanned the garden and saw two small dark lumps over by the shed. I knew instantly that they were hedgehogs, because, if nothing else, the amount of noise that was coming from them.
It also helps that there is no similar species in the UK, making hedgehogs with their spines, snouts and stubby legs unmistakable. The species found in the UK is the European Hedgehog (Erinaceous europaeus) which is one of only seventeen species of hedgehogs found natively throughout Afro-Eurasia, but there are other spiny species found throughout the world including porcupines, tenrecs, spiny mice and rats, and echidnas. The presence of spines on all these unrelated creatures is an example of convergent evolution. This is where natural selection produces similar characteristics on organisms which weren’t present on their last common ancestor. Having spines or spine-like hairs obviously prove useful in staying alive for a variety of species, and therefore these traits are selected for, despite not being present in the organisms’ ancestry.
Back to my hedgehogs now. I stood watching them for 20 minutes or so. During this time one circled the other which was snorting constantly. I thought this was probably some sort of courtship which indeed turned out to be the case, and I felt extremely privileged to have witnessed such a display. It turns out that it’s usually the male (boar) who circles the female (sow), while she snorts away. After a while the boar stopped circling and headed out under the fence, and the female exited in the opposite direction a short time later. It’s apparently not that uncommon for these long displays to not end in mating, and frankly I was just pleased that I’d got to experience these amazing creatures. These sorts of garden sightings could become less and less common, as hedgehogs are severely declining in the UK, and have been added as a priority species to the UK’s Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP). There’s also a concerted effort being run by the PTES and British Hedgehog Preservation Society to make gardens and streets more hedgehog friendly. Head over to www.hedgehogstreet.org for more details about how you can help. For my part, I hope to enjoy some more wildlife experiences at my new home before too long.
I’m going to leave with you a few pleasing bits of terminology for hedgehogs:
Alternative names – hedgepigs, urchins, furzepigs
Juveniles are called hoglets
The collective noun is an array, although prickle is also widely used.