Tag Archive | Wiltshire

Stourhead’s autumn colours

Chap and I headed out to Stourhead this morning to get a fix of autumn colours. The gardens open at 9 and we got there at about 9.30, and there were already plenty of people there. Unsurprisingly most of them seemed to be taking photos.

We did our usual circuit walk around the lake, anticlockwise this time. The colours are pretty good this year but I wonder if the best is still to come.

Stourhead. The Palladian bridge in the foreground and the Pantheon on the other side of the lake.

The Temple of Apollo.

View across the lake to the Temple of Flora.

The Pantheon, newly reopened after restoration works this summer. Look at the red of that acer – it gives that lady’s coat a run for its money!

Beautiful Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) on the island in the lake.

Beautiful tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) on one of the islands in the lake.

The river god, representing the River Stour, in his grotto.

Looking back at **8 through the grotto. Love the pebble floor!

Looking back at the river god through the grotto. Love the pebble floor! To the right in this view is the sleeping nymph.

The sleeping nymph in the grotto.

The Bristol Cross, the Palladian bridge and over on the other side of the lake, the Pantheon.

On the drive home from Stourhead, just to the south of the estate: fantastic little estate smallholding, with outbuildings for livestock. We could see geese, ducks and guinea fowl!

On the drive home from Stourhead, just to the south of the gardens en route to the wonderfully named village of Gasper: a fantastic little estate smallholding, with outbuildings for livestock. We could see geese, ducks and guinea fowl!

The autumn colours are still developing. Alan Power, the Head Gardener at Stourhead, gives updates on his Twitter feed, as well as tweeting some amazing photos (he’s definitely got a better camera and waaaaaay more skill than me!).

On it I found out that in August this year the gardens at Stourhead were Google mapped: soon you’ll be able to take a virtual walk around the estate, courtesy of Google and this young man!

And I have to include this photo that I found on Alan’s twitter feed: it’s the most stunning view of Stourhead, taken by James Aldred in May this year from one of the taller trees on the estate:

Stourhead. Stunning photo by James Aldred in May 2014, showing the Temple of Apollo on its heights, and the Palladian bridge in the foreground.

Update on Friday 31 October: I have just heard Alan Power on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, doing his annual description of the gardens, interviewed by the wonderful Eddie Mair. Alan has such a poetic way of describing the gardens, and his horticultural contributions are rightly a favourite part of PM’s annual cycle. He was recorded this afternoon, chatting for about 8 minutes on the programme, with the full 11½ minute interview available here. It’s well worth a listen: he clearly adores his job, the gardens, the plants and the people who visit, gaining pleasure from their pleasure, and he has a great eye for detail and a passion to share his delight in these fabulous gardens. A few lyrical snippets:

‘Trees in full autumnal song’

‘Early last week we had some wind come through the country … and on its way it undressed some of the trees’

‘On the island there’s a tulip tree that’s been rattled by the wind a little bit and its internal branches have no leaves left and it’s just haloed with a golden yellow’

‘And there’s architecture in the plants as well … looking across to the trees in the distance and there are some poplar trees and some birch trees by the grotto at Stourhead and they’re, they’re bolt upright you could describe them as, so their stems are really striking from a distance, really grey stems and they’re almost the same colour as the columns on top of the Pantheon, so you’ve got architecture within the soft planting and you’ve got the harder architecture of the eighteenth-century temples.’

‘The leaves have been falling gently and they haven’t been frightened by the frosts.’

Alan has been talking to PM about the autumn colours at Stourhead for six years now, and it’s just a delight.

Malmesbury Abbey, and the sad tale of Hannah Twynnoy

Oct15

A couple of Sundays ago Chap and I headed north, and visited Malmesbury Abbey and Cherhill in north Wiltshire. I wrote about Cherhill in a previous post, and now it’s Malmesbury Abbey’s turn, and also the sad tale of one of the inhabitants of the Abbey’s graveyard.

South front of the nave of Malmesbury Abbey. Photo by Adrian Pingstone.

‘Malmesbury Abbey from the North-West’ by Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1791. Watercolour on paper. One of a series of sketches Turner painted of the Abbey. Tate Britain.

But first, a little about the Abbey itself. It is a wonderful building: its slightly unprepossessing exterior when viewed from the south doesn’t really prepare you for the interior, I feel. As you approach the south door you get the first hint that something exceptional is here: the Norman arch over the entrance porch is simply stunning. Its 850-year-old carvings tell the stories of the creation, the journey of the patriarch and kings, and the life of Jesus.

The Norman porch at Malmesbury Abbey.

Inside the porch: six of the Apostles

Inside the porch: the other six.

Inside the porch, over the inner door: Christ and attending angels.

The present Abbey is the third house of worship to stand on the site, and this incarnation was substantially completed by 1180. Its construction continued piecemeal over the next two hundred years, and it had a spire taller than that of Salisbury Cathedral (which is a whopping 123 metres (404 feet) high, the tallest in the UK) at the east end, and an impressive tower at the west end. The spire and the tower on which it was built fell around 1500, and the tower fell abut 50 years after that: both collapses demolished large parts of the building. All that is left intact today is the nave of this once-enormous abbey. It is still used for worship, and is a much-loved building surrounded by the ruins of its former glory.

West window of the nave and enormous Norman columns.

Looking up at the south wall of the nave.

The ceiling of the nave with ornate bosses.

The Watching Loft above the south side of the nave.

The 14th century tomb of King Aethelstan (c.893/895-939 AD), who is buried in an unknown spot somewhere in the Abbey grounds.

The 17th century font.

One of the many monuments on the walls to the great and the good of the area. This one commemorates Mrs Elizabeth George of nearby Steeple Ashton, who died in 1734.

Stained glass window designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made in the William Morris workshops in 1901.

A beautiful Jacobean carved oak chair near the altar.

And wow—look at these flowers. They greet visitors and worshippers alike as they come in through the porch, and whoever was on the flower rota when these were done gets a gold star from me! Such a simple and beautiful arrangement of blue delphiniums, white asters and a white umbellifer—possibly Ammi major (also known as Bishop’s Lace, which is appropriate)—plus foliage.

Flowers in the entrance to the Abbey.

Hannah Twynnoy bears the sad distinction of being possibly the first recorded death by tiger attack in the United Kingdom. Little is known of her apart from her gravestone, and a memorial plaque which provided some details of her life and sad demise, but which has since been lost. Apparently Hannah was a young barmaid at the White Lion Inn in Malmesbury, and one day somehow got close enough to a tiger displayed by a visiting menagerie for it to be able to maul her, with fatal results. She died on 23 October 1703, aged 33 years. She was buried in the Abbey grounds, and her headstone reads:

In bloom of Life
She’s snatchd from hence,
She had not room
To make defence;
For Tyger fierce
Took Life away.
And here she lies
In a bed of Clay,
Until the Resurrection Day.

Hannah Twynnoy’s headstone in Malmesbury Abbey graveyard.

The west front of Malmesbury Abbey.

The Old Bell viewed from the Abbey graveyard (nice table tomb in the foreground). The Old Bell claims to be England’s oldest hotel, dating back to 1220.

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Just outside the Abbey grounds is Malmesbury Market Cross, dating from c. 1490.

Filming locations: Stourhead

Oct9

We are so lucky to live close to the beautiful landscape gardens of Stourhead, near Mere in south-western Wiltshire. Chap and I visit often, and we are about due another visit to see the gorgeous autumn colours there.

Stourhead. The Palladian Bridge in the foreground and the Pantheon on the other side of the lake. Photo by Inglenookery.

Stourhead. The Palladian Bridge in the foreground and the Pantheon on the other side of the lake. Photo taken April 2011 by Inglenookery.

The house at Stourhead was built by Henry Hoare between 1721—1725, and the gardens were developed soon afterwards. They were brought into greatness in the mid-eighteenth century by Hoare’s son Henry Hoare II, with the damming of the small River Stour to form the lake, the building of the various temples, planting of the trees and development of the landscape features.

Stourhead Estate is managed by the National Trust. The charity’s properties are often used for filming, especially for period pieces (I’ve previously written about Montacute House, Mompesson House and Saltram House).

View from the Pantheon looking across the lake to the Palladian Bridhge and . The tTemple of apollo is on the high ground to the right of the photo. Photo April 2011 by Infgelnookery.

Stourhead. View from the Pantheon looking across the lake to the bridge and the Temple of Flora. The Temple of Apollo is on the high ground to the right of the photo. Photo taken April 2011 by Inglenookery.

Stourhead is more famous for its gardens than its associated Palladian mansion, and I am always surprised at how little it has been used as a location for filming. Part of the reason might be that it is one of the Trust’s most popular properties, with the gardens open every day apart from Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Even though it has many visitors every day, the gardens are so large that they rarely feel crowded. In 2012—2013 it was the most visited NT property for which a charge is made, with 356,023 visitors (other open country sites in NT ownership, such as Avebury or the Coastal Paths, are free to visit and so counts of visitor numbers are not easily available.)

Stourhead. View of the lake from the Temple of Apollo. Taken by Inglenookery

Stourhead. View of the lake from the Temple of Apollo. Photo taken September 2013 by Inglenookery.

I can only think of it appearing in two films: the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, in the scene when Mr Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) first proposes to Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley), filmed in the rain at the Temple of Apollo, and the brief scene with Elizabeth running across the five-arched bridge over the lake; and the scene in Barry Lyndon, the 1975 film directed by Stanley Kubrick, where Barry (Ryan O’Neal) talks to his mother (Marie Kean) on the bridge, with the lake and the Pantheon in the background in some shots, and the Temple of Flora in the background in another. There must be others, I’m sure—I just can’t think of any.

Stourhead. The Temple of Apollo starring in Pride and Prejudice (2005).

The bridge at the lake at Storuhead, satrring in

Stourhead: the bridge at the lake, starring in Pride and Prejudice (2005).

Stourhead in a scene from Barry Lyndon: the bridge with the Pantheon in the background (1975).

Barry Lyndon (Ryan O’Neal) with his mother (Marie Kean) on the bridge at Stourhead, with the Temple of Flora in the background.

Barry Lyndon (Ryan O’Neal) on the bridge at Stourhead.

We we very lucky when we visited in September last year—the Festival of the Voice was taking place, and it was magical to hear unaccompanied choral works drifting in the air as we walked around the garden. We stopped at the Pantheon to listen to this (apologies for it being filmed sideways on. I have no idea a) how to film or b) how to edit …)

Short National Trust history of the house and gardens.

Sunday stroll: Cherhill

Sep29

Yesterday Chap and I headed north—most unusual for us (our hearts are in the south and west, and best of all the south-west). We visited the beautiful town of Malmesbury with its glorious abbey, founded in 675 AD, and then went on to Cherhill, a chalk downland hill near Calne. You can’t miss Cherhill: atop it sits the Lansdowne Monument, a 38 m (125 feet) high obelisk, and carved into the side of the hill is the famous Cherhill White Horse, one of several in the region. Cherhill is in the ownership of the National Trust, and is managed as part of the Avebury Estate.

Cherhill. Photo by MacFodder.

Cherhill packs in an awful lot of history into its not-so-great size. On top of the hill sits the two thousand year old plus Iron Age hillfort of Oldbury. The massive earthworks enclose an area of 10.1 hectares (25 acres). The northern part of the fort has no bank and ditch as the steep slope of the side of the downland provides natural defence.

Aerial photo of Oldbury. The Lansdowne Monumnet is visible within the north-western part of the Iron Age hillfort. Photo by Google.

Aerial photo of Oldbury. The Lansdowne Monument is visible within the north-western part of the Iron Age hillfort. The White Horse is just out of shot at the top of the image area. Photo by Google.

The earthworks of the Iron Age hillfort.

The entrance to the interior of the hillfort through the earthworks, in the south-east part of the hillfort.

The entrance to the interior of the hillfort through the earthworks, in the east part of the hillfort.

On the north-facing slopes of the downland, and clearly visible from the A4, an old coaching road, is the Cherhill White Horse. This was constructed in 1780, the brainchild of Dr Christopher Alsop of Calne. Alsop was known as ‘The Mad Doctor’, and is reputed to have instructed the workers by shouting through a megaphone from the wonderfully-named Labour-in-Vain Hill. The horse was originally 50 m by 67 m (165 feet by 220 feet).

The construction method for a white horse is very simple—the thin turf and soil is removed from the underlying chalk bedrock. When first exposed, the chalk is a brilliant white, and so contrasts well with the surrounding turf. However, the chalk soon weathers, turning a greyish colour, sometimes a greeny-grey if algae grows on it, and weeds take hold. For this reason, hill-cut chalk figures (of which there are a good number in southern England) have to be regularly re-scoured or re-dressed with fresh chalk. As far as I can make out, it was last re-dressed in 2002.

View of a rather grubby looking Cherhill White Horse from just below the Lansdowne Monument.

Close to, it is so large that you can barely make it out as a horse. Needs a good clean!

Close to, it is so large and becomes so abstract that you can barely make it out as a horse. Needs a good clean!

Here it is in brighter days. Photo by Dan Gabor.

The Lansdowne Monument was designed by Sir Charles Barry (he of the Houses of Parliament), and built in 1845 by Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, the 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne in memory of his ancestor Sir William Petty (1623-1687). Sir William was an economist, scientist and philosopher, and held the position of Surveyor General of Ireland in the 1660s. The Monument is 38 metres (125 feet) high, and is a Grade II* listed building.

The Lansdowne Monument. Photo by Lisa Hillier in 2002.

The Monument is currently boarded up at its base for public safety: the Bath Stone quoins have been eroding away in the bad winter weather and large fragments of rock have dropped from it.

Slightly skewiff photo, but it shows the boarding at the base well.

Close to the Lansdowne Monument.

A sad sign of the times: on the boarding was a notice by the National Trust saying it is not known when funding will be available to repair the Monument.

Even though it was an overcast day, the views from the hill to the north are wonderful.

Poplar hawk moth

Sep15

Chap found this little fellow yesterday on the ground underneath a neighbour’s aspen tree. Isn’t he stunning? Such gorgeous colours.

It’s the caterpillar of a poplar hawk moth (Laothoe populi), and I gather they feed on aspen, poplar and willow leaves. The aspen leaves are starting to fall so he might have been on one when it tumbled off the tree.

Poplar hawk moth caterpillar, 14 September 2014. Photo by Inglenookery.

I hope he wasn’t hurt—we aren’t sure what the clear liquid is, but hope it might be some sort of defence mechanism rather than indicating he is injured.

We aren’t sure what the clear liquid is, but hope that the little fellow wasn’t hurt. Photo by Inglenookery.

He’s such a gorgeous lime green colour with four rows of maroon spots, and matching bootees! Chap put him back under the tree: he’ll dig a hole and pupate there, and hatch out next year as a beautiful moth.

Poplar hawk moth. Photo by Hamon jean-pierre.

Sunday stroll: south-western Wiltshire

Aug18

Chap and I did a short (c. 2 mile) circuit around our village yesterday lunchtime. We went through the village allotments, and saw a clouded yellow butterfly (Colias croceus) in the wildflower/conservation area there, the first we have seen this year, as well as a beautiful bright green beetle on some mint (the imaginatively named mint leaf beetle).

Mint leaf beetle, Chrysolina herbacea.

We startled a small flock of starlings out of a dense thicket of blackberries in the conservation area. I assume they were feeding there as 1 pm seems a bit early to roost!

Out of the village there is the Ox Drove, an old drovers’ road that is a haven for butterflies and other insects. (It was here, many years ago, we saw our first and so-far only glow worm (Lampyris noctiluca) on a summer’s evening).

The Ox Drove.

Here there were butterflies aplenty: we saw a brimstone, plenty of small whites, small tortoiseshells, speckled woods, peacocks, red admirals and some rather tatty holly blues.

Speckled wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria).

Holly blue butterfly (Celastrina argiolus).

We also saw a southern hawker dragonfly (Aeshna cyanea) to which I was able to get very close to photograph. I love their folk name of ‘Devil’s knitting needles’, even though there is nothing devilish about them (their larvae however are another matter when it comes to the stuff of nightmares …).

Southern hawker dragonfly (Aeshna cyanea).

The berries and fruits are splendid this year. The elderberries are positively dripping off the trees, the haws are colouring up, wayfarers and guelder roses have their bright red berries, there are loads of blackberries and best of all a pretty good sloe crop—not the best there’s ever been, but enough to pick a load for sloe gin and sloe vodka without damaging the birds’ winter larder.

Elderberries (Sambucus nigra).

Haws ripening on a hawthorn bush (Crataegus monogyna).

Wayfarer berries (Viburnum lantana).

Sloes (Prunus spinosa).

We walked through lovely countryside of low rolling chalk downland. Our part of south-western Wiltshire is given mostly to arable farming, often in very large fields (often made out of several smaller ones by ripping out the ancient hedgerows, sadly). Most of the crops have been harvested, but nearer to home there were still a couple of fields of wheat, barley and flax waiting to be brought in.

Chap doing his Maximus Decimus Meridius impression in a barley field on the way home.

Raptors in and around our village

Jul29

The night before last I was awake between 3 and 5 am (I know that much as I heard the village church clock strike 3, then 4, then 5 … Oh the joys of insomnia!) and just before 4 am a tawny owl (Strix aluco) perched up very close to our cottage and started its call.

Tawny owl (Strix aluco). Photo by Martin Mecnarowski.

As it has been so hot recently all our windows are wide open, so it sounded like it was almost on top of us: I think it might have been in our neighbour’s alder tree. Anyhow, after a few initial single screechy ‘ooh-eee’ calls (can’t think how to describe them better), it started up with its regular ‘Hoo hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo’ call, the one that we in the UK often call ‘twit-twooo’. (This BBC video starts with the ‘twit-twoo’ and ends up with a screechy one, if you were curious to know what my pathetic attempts at owl call transcription actually sound like).

Within a couple of minutes a second, distant tawny owl was responding, setting up a nice duet. And then a third joined in, somewhere between the other two—not as loud as the first but louder than the second. And he sounded like he had a bad case of sore throat: his croaky calls didn’t add much to the melody. The three of them sang to each other (or more realistically, disputed territories vocally) for about ten minutes, and then, as abruptly as it had started, it stopped. I still didn’t get to sleep though.

Tawny owl chicks. Photo by Artur Mikołajewski.

Tawny owl chicks. Cute overload! Photo by Artur Mikołajewski.

I have a real fascination for raptors of all kinds. We are lucky to have various kinds living in and flying over our village. We frequently see buzzards (Buteo buteo) and occasionally sparrowhawks (Accipiter nisus) flying over—the sparrowhawks hunt quite low over our garden and I have had some amazingly close encounters.

Buzzard (common buzzard, Buteo buteo). Photo by Arend.

Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) in flight, seen from underneath. Photo by Christian Knoch.

Most exciting of all are the red kites (Milvus milvus) that we have started seeing in the last four years or so.

Red kite (Milvus milvus). This stunning bird has a two metre wingspan. Photo by Thomas Kraft.

These magnificent birds used to be common in the UK—so common that they used to scavenge for scraps on the street of medieval London—but were so relentlessly persecuted over the centuries that their numbers dwindled to a handful of breeding birds in mid Wales by early 1900s. Reintroductions using European birds started in Wales and a little later in the Chiltern Hills in the UK, followed by other projects around the country, and these have been a great success: the red kite population is increasing and their distribution across the UK is spreading.

We waited and waited for our first sighting round these parts. A friend told us he had seen one in Dorset. Then in February 2006 great excitement when Chap saw one circling over an ‘A’ road about three miles from here. But the day were were hoping for—seeing a red kite over our own village here in south-west Wiltshire—finally came on 19 April 2010. That was a red letter day indeed for our nature diary. Since then we have seen them regularly—so regularly in fact that we hope they are breeding nearby, rather than just passing through.

We once were lucky enough to see a kite and a buzzard flying in the same thermal, and we were able to compare sizes: the buzzard is a big bird, but next to the kite it was dwarfed.

Welsh Kite Trust website

Royal Society for the Protection of Bird (RSPB) website

British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) website

Peacock wrangling

Jul15

There is a sweet BBC news item this morning about the peacocks at Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire who are looking for love—apparently there aren’t enough peahens to go around and so “the lovelorn birds have been displaying their tail feathers to park benches, bins and squirrels in an attempt to find a mate.”

Peacock in display. Photo by N A Nazeer.

Peacock displaying. Photo by N A Nazeer.

It reminded me of the time I was working for the National Trust at Avebury in the mid 90s, as Archaeologist/Warden. There were peacocks in the grounds of the Manor House there, including a spectacular white peacock, who was even more stunning when he was displaying. The peacocks and peahens lived wild, and roosted at night in the trees. One of the males had been attacked, we thought by a fox, and needed veterinary attention. So Chris Gingell (the Estate Manager) and I managed to get this beautiful bird, full tail feathers and all, into the back of one of the Trust’s Subaru pickups (it was an enclosed one) and drive it to the vets in Devizes. The entire staff crammed into the consultation room to watch, as it was the first (and I imagine still the only) time a peacock had been brought in—and he was looking particularly impressive as he was in full feather at the time. It turned out he hadn’t been too badly injured at all and he went on to make a full recovery.

Avebury Manor, now sadly peacockless. Photo by Chris Collard.

Avebury Manor, south elevation. Photo by Brian Robert Marshall.

A few years later, after I’d left the Trust’s employ at Avebury to become self-employed, I heard on the morning news on Radio 4 that the villagers were trying to get the Trust to get rid of the peacocks, as they were wandering into neighbouring gardens and wrecking the flowers and their loud calls were an annoyance to some people. It wasn’t really national newsworthy, apart from the fact that they interviewed the grand old man of broadcasting and peacock-disliker Ludovic Kennedy. He and his wife Moira Shearer lived in the village and I think he might have been calling in some favours from his media chums in an attempt to pressurise the Trust into binning the birds. The birds duly went, leaving Avebury a much quieter but less colourful place.

So that’s one of the more interesting things I could put on my cv: peacock wrangler.

Daytime moths in our garden

Jul7

In the last couple of weeks we have had lots of beautiful scarlet tiger moths (Callimorpha dominula) in the garden.

Scarlet tiger moth on an Alchemilla mollis leaf in our garden, forewings only showing.

I was chatting on the phone the other day and looking out of the study window as I did so, on to the garden. The tiger moths were flying and I could look down on them, and they have the most brilliant flashes of red as they fly—quite striking. You can just see a hint of the red in the photo above, under the wing. Here it is in all its glory:

Scarlet tiger moth with the red underwings showing. Photo by Chris Manley for Butterfly Conservation.

Scarlet tiger moth with the red hindwings showing. Photo by Chris Manley for Butterfly Conservation.

They’ve been appearing each summer for about as long as we have been growing green alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens), and various reference books tell me that the scarlet tiger moth caterpillars feed mostly on comfrey (Symphytum officinale), which is a member of the Boraginaceae (borage or forget-me-not plant family), like the green alkanet. So it is not too much of a stretch to wonder if the caterpillars are feeding on our green alkanet plants, though I haven’t seen any direct evidence of this apart from the fact that the moths are concentrated in the part of the garden where the alkanet is. We have masses of honeysuckle in the garden (Lonicera caprifolium, Lonicera periclymenum ‘Serotina’ and Lonicera x italica) and the Butterfly Conservation page on the moths says the older caterpillars feed on that, so that might where they are dining.

One of the other really striking moths we see in our garden during the day is the large privet hawk moth (Sphinx ligustri). One time Chap found one on the lawn.

Privet hawk moth (Sphinx ligustri) in our garden. Big, isn’t it?

Privet hawk moth (Sphinx ligustri). That’s him at the top in the plate of illustrations.

Privet hawk moth (Sphinx ligustri).

We moved it out of harm’s way and when next we looked it had flown off. We see these about once a year: they’re not at all common round here, which is a shame as they are so beautiful.

The third moth we see during the day is the hummingbird hawk moth (Macroglossum stellatarum). We see a lot of these every year, usually in the later summer. They especially like feeding on our phlox flowers (Phlox paniculata ‘Mount Fuji’), and often are feeding right until dusk, darting from flower to flower in a flurry of wings—they make an audible ‘whirr’ as they fly. These little beauties fly so quickly that I haven’t yet managed to get a decent photo of one.

Hummingbird hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum). Photo by IronChris.

Hummingbird hawk moth (Macroglossum stellatarum), feeding on lavender (Lavandula sp.). Photo by IronChris.

UK Moths website.

Butterfly Conservation website.

Hedgehogs and badgers, part 2

Jun26

Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus). Photo by Jörg Hempel.

This morning I was woken at 1.15 am by hedgehog cries, horribly familiar as two nights ago two hedgehogs were attacked by a badger up our lane. This time the badger was attacking a hedgehog in a neighbour’s garden. I was able to get right up to the badger before it ran off through the hedge into another garden. I rolled the poor hedgehog onto a shallow dish (plant pot saucer) and took it into our garden. As I was watching it, more hedgehog cries came from the garden into which the badger had ran. I climbed over the fence (not very dignified), and rescued another hedgehog from the badger and brought it into our garden and put it by the first one. I went back to bed cursing the badger. I think it’s a young one, from the size of it, and am pretty sure it’s attacking the hedgehogs because the ground is so dry and it can’t get at any worms. Chap slept through all the racket, amazingly.

Sad news this morning. Chap found one of the hedgehogs dead on the lawn. As hedgehogs are in serious decline, this is doubly sad. At least the weather forecast is for rain this evening and overnight, so I hope the badger will be able to get at some worms and leave the hedgehogs alone.

RSPCA website link.

Wiltshire Wildlife Hospital website link.

Hedgehog (and other wild animals) rescue charity website link: St Tiggywinkles.