Our Hedgehog Friends

🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔 We take great care at Willow's Forest School to teach our little forest schoolers all about caring for our wildlife friends. They learn about hibernation and habitats in particular, with the winter months ahead.

In the UK, bats, hedgehogs, snakes, dormice, frogs, ladybirds, bumble bees and snails all go into hibernation during the winter months.

Hedgehogs are particularly vulnerable and are alarmingly in decline with loss of their favoured habitats such as hedgerow and field margins due to intensive farming and pesticides in the insects they eat.

They seem to be doing better in urban areas, with a messier garden being in favour! Piles of twigs and leaves help with hibernation, dead wood houses a plentiful supply of their staple diet of insects and holes in fences provide access. All in all a perfect excuse not to bother tidying the garden 😀

With leaf and sticks piles in mind, unfortunately, bonfires built early on in preparation for November 5th are an enticing place for our little hogs to snuggle up under. Please please do check yours before lighting.

We have been making hedgehog habitats at our site in Chertsey, Sutton Green, Ottershaw and Worplesdon. Once the we have the brick foundation, we fill the space with straw and dry leaves for bedding. Once the roof is on, we pile on the leaves, which is so much fun. Two sticks diagonally crossed are inserted in the soil at the entrance. When the children revisit, they rush to the hog house to see if the sticks have been knocked down and if they have, then there is a great chance the hedgehogs have nestled themselves into their new habitat! The children are thrilled and full of excitement!

Hedgehogs can become very poorly if they eat anything other than their own diet of insects or meaty (not fishy) cat or dog food. So a well intended saucer of milk will upset their tums!!

Leaving small amounts of meaty cat or dog food, in the hope that they will become a cozy winter hideaway for our little hog friends.

🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔

Willow's Forest School support a local charity based in Windlesham in Surrey called Harper Asprey Wildlife Rescue. It is run by volunteers and they do an amazing job with a huge variety of wildlife! www.harperaspreywildliferescue.com

This is one of their rescues. Meet Cora. She has a nasty chest infection and is feeling quite poorly, luckily it has not put her off her food so she is growing well. Fingers crossed her medication will start to work very soon. #hedgehog #wildliferescue#poorly #hoglet #medication #infection#getbettersoon