Foxes : Why are they seen as a pest?

Hi everyone, now I know it has been a while since my last blog post, so sorry about that, but today we are going to be looking at foxes. Now foxes get a bit of a bad rap really, everyone sees them as bin destroying, noisy, pests, but let’s take a closer look at foxes, and maybe then we can try and understand why they do the things they do.

Behaviour: Bin destroying

Have you ever woken up to see the contents of you’re bin strewn across the pavement. I bet you have, or at least seen it happen to someone else, and often foxes get the blame.

So why do foxes destroy and eat out of bins. First of all foxes often get the blame even when its not them, cats and dogs can also destroy bins to get at food. Secondly as Spring is approaching food will be plentiful and foxes won’t scavenge so much. Eating out of bins, usually comes about due to a lack of other alternatives, most animals hibernate or migrate during the winter, so foxes are often left a little high and dry when it gets colder. Forcing them to turn to less savoury alternatives such as your bin.

You can stop foxes from getting at you’re bin by recycling your food waste, that way there aren’t any opportunities for foxes to get at the food, and its good for the environment. Also if you are throwing away packaging that once contained food, for example a tin can, try to wash it out as well as you can (it is tricky with some things), this will remove the smell and stop foxes getting interested in the first place.

Behaviour: Calling and barking at night

Foxes usually do this between the months of December to February to attract a mate, you will often hear vixens “screaming” which can be quite disconcerting and unnerving to hear.

Now there aren’t many things you can do to stop the screaming, so your best course of action would be to try and move the fox on. There are some strong smelling repellent easily available so try that, it will hopefully courage the foxes to avoid your garden, you could also put up an external light that will also deter them from you’re garden, but do remember the noises will only be for a few weeks.

Behaviour : Digging holes

Foxes, a little like dogs actually, love to dig holes, in bowling greens, country parks and mostly annoyingly gardens. They reason they do this is to hunt for earthworms, grubs and larvae. Foxes will only do this in wet periods however, do if there are holes appearing in your garden during warm, sunny spells foxes probably aren’t the culprits. Fox will dig up the garden because during during rainy seasons the bugs and beetles all come to the surface of the ground, and so foxes, well they dig in. Yum! Yum!

Unfortunately there isn’t much you can do to stop this behaviour, just wait for the rain to pass and then repair the lawn. There probably won’t be too much damage.

So there you have it a little more information on why the foxes do the things they do, and some way you can try to stop them from doing it. If you want more infomation on foxes then visit

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I hoped you enjoyed the blog post and I will see you again next week. Bye for now!!

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Getting ready for Spring

The air is getting warmer, albeit tantalisingly slowly, plants are starting to bud and animals are slowly coming back to life. Yes everyone, Spring is finally here and it is well known as the time of new life and a fresh start, so here are a few things you can do to help young animals find their feet in this big ol’ world.

Firstly, I keep saying this because it is so important!! Leaving food out, it really helps young animals trying to put on as much weight as possible before the the winter comes. Although it may seem a little early to be thinking about the winter again for these animals it is a matter of life and death, if they can’t get big and strong enough quickly enough then they will die. So, bird feeders, hedgehog food, even you’re own waste scraps of food, can really help. A great thing to do is start a compost heap, this will attract animals like worms which are great fodder for birds!

tasty food for our prickly friends – also how much you should put out each night

Building houses. Haha, not in the literal sense of the word, but have you ever thought of building a bird box, of how about a hedgehog house. You can buy bird houses that you can build yourself, or pre-made ones on websites such as amazon, and trust me there are some particularly awesome ones on there. You could also build a bug hotel (instruction can found on the RSPB website) or once again buy (also on amazon). Hedgehog houses sound hard, but they really don’t have to be. Instruction on how to build one can be found on the British hedgehog Preservation Society, but you can also buy them on amazon!

our hedgehog house camouflaged in leaves

One last thing you can do is leave an area of you’re garden to grow wild! This will encourage all kinds of wildlife into your garden, butterflies, bees, birds, hedgehogs. Leaving an area of garden to nature, can make for a brilliant spot for wildlife all around and you’ll find yourself surrounded by beautiful creatures.

Well that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed my post, and will do some of the things that I have written about! Don’t forget to like, subscribe and comment below!!! See you all next week!

Ways to see AMAZING wildlife without even leaving your living room

Have you ever wanted to see an elephant, how about a chimpanzee, or even a pangolin. I’m willing to bet the answer is yes, I have wanted to see these animals ever since I can remember. However, especially with the lockdown, seeing these incredible creatures is harder than ever. So today I’m going to tell two different ways you can see these awesome animals.

The first one is my personal favourite, Zooniverse; Chimp and see. Now let me explain. Zooniverse is a website on which you can do online volunteering for organisations, they have everything under the sun, from transcribing bird nest sites, to mapping out galaxies, and you guessed it recording wildlife.

Chimp and See, is one such organisation, trying to both boost biodiversity especially in our all too rare cousins, chimps, but also to try and learn more about humans own evolution from the chimpanzees. I myself have spent several hours, identifying wildlife on this site, and can confirm its incredible. I have seen all the things mentioned above, from elephants, to chimpanzees, baboons, pangolins, mongooses, civets, duikers and antelopes. It’s amazing to see the extraordinary biodiversity of the rainforest. So definitely go and check it out !

Photo by Ishara Kasthuriarachchi on Pexels.com

Secondly online zoos. During the lockdown many zoos put up cameras, so that people could still enjoy wildlife from home. They are an amazing chance to see animals acting naturally, without thousands of people gawking in and disturbing them. Zoos such as, Edinburgh, Chester, Paignton, and London have all put cameras up in their enclosures and you can see, pandas, flamingos, meerkats and even giraffes. Chester zoo, also do ‘virtual guided tour’ type things where the tour guide, tells you all about the animals. It’s really fascinating and i loved watching them! Just serch up Chester zoo online, and it should come straight up!

Photo by Laura The Explaura on Pexels.com

I hope you enjoyed this post and found it useful. I really loved watching the virtual tours, and particpating in chimp and see, and I hope you will too. Bye for now!

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Top Five cool but unknown animals

Hey everyone and welcome back to Hedgehog Heaven. Today we are going to be looking at my top five cool but unknown animals. There are so many animals in this world, many of which everyone knows about, but what about the unknown ones? Today I’m going to be talking to you about my favourite cool but unknown animals.

The Genet – I had never ever heard of this animal until yesterday. The Genet has a fur coat that looks a little like a leopard, but a body that is more like a mink or weasel but bigger. The only species of Genet that can be found in Europe is the common Genet which lives in France.

The Tasmanian Devil – A fairly large four legged marsupial. The Tasmanian Devil is carnivorous and fairly dangerous. When people started settling in Tasmania from Europe, they heard strange screams, coughs and grunts in the night, and decided to go searching for the cause. They found a creature with long fangs, sharp claws, and black fur, so they called it a Devil. So it is now called a Tasmanian Devil.

Coati – This unusual animal looks a little like a cross between a lemur and a raccoon, and dwell mainly in South America. Coati also enjoy climbing trees where their sharp claws allowing them to climb down trees headfirst, and their long tails him them balance so that they can climb with speed and agility.

Axolotl – The Axolotl or walking fish, is not actually a fish but an amphibian found in Mexico. It is a carnivore and can grow up to three inches long. It has a long fish like body, and looks a little like a cat fish however it also has legs for manoeuvring on land. They are also able to regenerate body parts.

Echidna – The Echidna is a little bit like a cross between a hedgehog and a ant eater. With a back of prickly spikes and a long nose. They are mammals, but the only mammal other than the platypus to lay eggs. These animals are only found in Australia and New Guinea, but they have the largest distribution of all the native mammals in Australia, liking both forests, coasts and deserts.

Well everyone that’s it for today, I hope you enjoyed my post. If you did, don’t forget to leave a like. I you have any comments, suggestions or ideas, please comment them down below. And if you want to see more of this, subscribe!! Bye for now.

Spring Babies

With spring almost here many of us will have felt the rising temperatures and lengthening day, but spring also means one thing. Babies! Yes that’s right spring is the season of cute adorable babies, so in this post I will be telling you; when each baby animal first starts to appear, how many there are in a litter, along with fun facts, to help you know more about these adorable creatures. So let’s jump right in!

Hedgehogs – May, June or even July. Some hedgehogs also have a second litter in September, but these hoglets rarely make it through the winter. A hedgehog will have 4-5 hoglets in a litter
Foxes – Foxes are much simpler, they give birth in March, and only have one litter of 4-5 cubs per year. So watch out for them now, in a few days Fox cubs will be running around your garden!
Badgers – boy, these badgers are early birds, they give birth usually in the first half of February, and their litter can differ between 1-5 cubs! So be on the lookout now!
Squirrels – squirrels could give birth in many different months, march, April or June and July are the most common times of the year
Deer – Deer are much more simple, they give birth in May or June to around 1, 2 or even 3 kids
Owls – now owls are very interesting, although they are able to give birth in almost any month of the year, most pairs only lay eggs in the spring, with the most popular day being April 17th! It was May 9th, but has moved forward, scientists believe this to be because of climate change.

That’s it for today, I hope you enjoyed the post, and now know when you can look out of these adorable babies so get outside and find some! If you liked the post please, leave a like. Any ideas or suggestions? Comment them below. And if you like my content, subscribe!! Have good week and bye for now!!!

The best place in the UK to find wildlife

Hey everyone, today I’m going to be talking to you about the best place in the UK to find wildlife. David Attenborough has said that this place is the best place in the UK, to discover nature and wild animals, and it is of course Northumberland, but why is it so good for finding wildlife?

Well partly the reason is because it is on the coast meaning it not only has access to land animals, but also sea creatures. Animals such as seals and dolphins pop up everywhere, which is incredible!

It also has a huge national park which covers 405 square miles! There are loads of areas of outstanding natural beauty, rolling hills, thick forests, and good old sea air. The forests are filled with incredibly cute deer, just take a look at this footage

https://www.facebook.com/discovernland/videos/719252175629381/

But other animals including stoats, bats, wildcats, mountain hares, polecats, beavers and minks to name just a few, but you can get the full list at

https://www.nwt.org.uk/wildlife-explorer/mammals?page=1

They also run a number of projects such as

restoring ratty – which is a project focused on bringing the water vole back in larger numbers
Red Squirrels – Red Squirrels Northern England is an organisation working to help bring back red squirrels back!!
Wildwood – a project focused on replanting forests and brining woods back to the area

All of these efforts brought together create one of the most naturally diverse place in the UK, and as David Attenborough says the best place in the UK to find wildlife, which is my holiday this year is already booked and I’m headed straight for Northumberland.

Ten ‘facts’ about animals that are NOT true!

Hello everyone and welcome back to Hedgehog heaven, today I will writing about facts that pretty much everyone thinks are true, but aren’t. So let’s get right into, there are some surprising ones in here!

Camels don’t store water in their humps! They actually store fat there, they don’t actually store water anywhere, but have simply adapted to not being able to drink for long periods of time
Did you know chameleons don’t change colour in order to camouflage themselves. They actually change colour due to their mood and the temperature.
Goldfish are intelligent! Yes goldfish are in actual fact quite clever, they can remember things weeks after it has happened and can even be trained.
Bulls don’t get angry by seeing red. Bulls can’t actually distinguish colours, and so it wouldn’t matter if you waved a green, blue or pink flag at them. They react to the movement.
Bees can sting more than once. The one bee that can only sting once is the honey bee, but bumblebees can sting you as much as they like. Yikes!!
Bats can see. Although they also use echolocation, bats aren’t blind and some studies have shown, that they prefer to use sight when hunting prey.
Owls can’t actually spin their head 360 degrees. It’s more like 270, but that’s still pretty impressive and far more than a human.
The T-Rex has pretty good vision. Some scientists now believe that the T-Rex had better vision than eagles and hawks. And you don’t get the name Hawkeye for nothing!
Turkeys can fly. Yes although they can’t get very far they can and do fly! (domestic turkeys can’t as they have been breed to have a larger breast)
Wolves do not howl at the moon. Yes disappointing though this may be, they do not howl at the moon, the misconception comes because wolves often howl at night.

So that’s it for today everyone, I hope you enjoyed the post! And I will see you all next week.

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My Top Three Nature Books

Hello everyone today we have a sequel to last weeks post, over Christmas with these new lockdown restrictions in place there will plenty of time to settle down with a good book and so here are my top three suggestions for nature books .

3. The science of animals : inside their secret world

This book is incredible, it has hundreds of pages filled with information all about animals, it is from the Natural History Museum and it is amazing, I love leafing through it’s pages and finding out all about a rhino’s horn, or how a dorsal fin works, or about the life of an emperor penguin. It is all there in it’s pages, everything anyone could ever want to know about animals

2. British wildlife detectives book by Miles Kelly

I absolutely adore this book for within it’s pages you can record every animals you see on a walk, whether it’s a seal, hedgehog or vole, it has [pretty much every type of animals within it’s pages, with a few facts about it and space to write about your observation, as well as room to put a picture in. This is a wonderful book and I have spent many years filling it in, with all the animals I have found over the years.

Do Unto Animals by Tracy Stewart

This is my favourite nature book of all time. inside it’s pages you can learn not only about all kinds of animals, whether they are pets, farmed, or wild, but you can also learn how to help them. How to make a bee hotel, or a hedgehog house. This book is filled with increible illustrations and even more amazing insight into animals. If you are going to pick one book from this list, pick this one. I promise it won’t disappoint.

So there you have it my top three nature books, I really hope you get them and enjoy them as much as I have over the years, and plus they make great presents, so if there are any animal lovers in your house this is an amazing present. If you have any comments please put them down below and make sure you hit that like button. If you want more content like this then make sure to subscribe as we have loads coming your way.

River Animals: Birds

Hello again, and welcome back to my river animals series, this week I will be looking at the birds that live in and around our waterways, so let’s jump right in!

The first bird of course has to be the swan. f England swans are well known for their grace and beauty and are a common sight around English waterways, especially in rivers, but did you know there are actually three different breeds of swan in England, mute swans are the largest and the only ones that stay all year round in England, the other two breeds of swan migrate to England from the arctic, these are the Whooper swan and Bewick’s swan, which is the smallest breed of the three .

Second on our list is the Grey Heron, an incredibly tall bird, famed for its ability to stand totally still when hunting, waiting for the fish to come to it. They mainly life to live in and around lakes and ponds and they can have a wingspan of up to 195 cm, that’s almost 2 meters! Herons are actually widely spread across the world, their numbers stretch from Japan to Africa. Plus they don’t migrate so you can see this feathery friend all year round!

Finally we have the Curlew a slightly unusual bird, it’s incredibly long beak gives it quite a comical look, so here are a few facts for you about the curlew, although it is a migratory bird in the rest of the world, they live all year round in the British isles as it has a milder climate than the rest of the UK. It is actually the largest wading bird, and they mostly eat little things they dig up with their longs beaks from the mud, such as worms and crabs. The curlew is unfortunately endangered due to loss of habitat, as it lives in moorlands and grasslands.

So there you have it my top three water birds, I hope you enjoyed reading this blog as much as I enjoyed writing it and I will see you next week where I will be looking at amphibians and reptiles that live in and around our waterways. So see you next time.

Tag: conservation