by Hugh Warwick
On my return to Devon, Peter, the farmer, was obviously quite agitated about something. Pat Morris had come to check up on how things were going, so we were led into the hayfield wondering what on earth had got into the previously calm farmer. As we got into the field he told us that he had found the remains of a hedgehog.
It was not difficult to find. There was a large area of flattened hay with plenty of congealed blood – and in the midst of the gore, the skin and spines of the hedgehog. It had been emptied out.
Pat and I bent down to investigate. Well, the good news was that it was not one of ‘ours’. It was a wild hedgehog – a resident of the area that I had marked with paint on its spines earlier in the project. But the bad news was that this looked like the work of a badger.
Now, we knew that there were badgers in the area – in fact, it is pretty much impossible to find anywhere in the West Country without badgers. And while badgers are known predators of hedgehogs, they are also competitors – meaning that this site was at least going to provide plenty of food for our charges.
This is a great bit of ecology, called intra-guild predation. It’s not often that you get to equate the hedgehog with the hyena, but I’ll give it a go. Hedgehogs and badgers are of the same ‘guild’; they eat the same sorts of thing. They are competitors for worms and other invertebrate prey. Hyenas and lions are of the same ‘guild’; they eat the same sorts of thing. They are competitors for ungulates and other vertebrate prey. And here is the link: lions also eat hyenas and badgers eat hedgehogs, but not all the time. By eating hedgehogs, badgers are also removing competitors for the limited supply of worms.
We had taken the chance to use this farm simply because it had been used by the RSPCA for a number of years as a release point for hedgehogs. And while there had been no formal follow-up, there was clearly a healthy resident population now – and as we had just discovered, when a badger tucks into a hedgehog, it is fairly clear to see.
So it was with a degree of trepidation that Pat and I set out that night. We had tracked down all but two – Freya and Nigel. Both being fairly active, this was not unexpected. As I had been away for a few days, I was worried that they might have disappeared from the range of the receiver.
Eventually I got a signal from Freya – and it was coming from a part of the farm that she had rarely frequented. It was a muddled series of beeps. Something felt not quite right, but I was not prepared for the shock of what confronted me tucked in among the exposed roots of an unkempt hedge. There she was, just her spines, with the transmitter still attached, merrily beeping away.
A few weeks later, after I returned to civilization, I was to get an even greater shock. I read an obituary for Dame Freya Stark. My hedgehog’s namesake had died on 9 May 1993 at the age of 100 – the very same day that I had found Freya eaten by a badger.
So to Nigel. There are good scientific reasons for not having favourites when attempting to conduct an experiment. And there are good practical reasons. I was a nervous wreck as we eventually caught a signal. Would my mate be in the same state as Freya?
The signal got clearer. At last we were on the right path and my spirits rose as it led us to an area he was obviously fond of. Getting closer, the volume of the beeping rose until it was distorting on the small speaker. I was on top of him and there he was. I saw the glow of the tag, crouched down to scoop him up, ready to hug the living daylights out of the poor beast, only to find that I had hold of the husk of my friend.
Retiring to the caravan, Pat and I sat in despondent silence as we nursed our tea. Though I have to say that while I mourned the passing of dear friends, I think Pat was mourning the loss of good data. After a while we began to try to work out what was happening. Why should there be no problem with badgers for six weeks and then, in just a few days, carnage had been let loose? We came up with a theory that still seems the most reasonable. The resident badger population did not seem to eat hedgehogs, so perhaps this was the work of a passing badger – one that was looking for a new territory. We reasoned it was quite possible that hedgehogs only become food to badgers once they have learned the bundle of prickles is worth dealing with – perhaps after coming upon a casualty on the roads.
Pat left me to complete the work and at around 2.45 a.m. I headed back into the night as he headed back to his warm bed and breakfast. My remaining hedgehogs were soon all accounted for, apart from Little Willy. He was one of the smallest hedgehogs, did not often stray and had earned his name from the detumescence of an injury to his more sensitive parts. Earlier in the night I had found him moving up towards the south border of the farm, so it seemed likely that he had simply plucked up the courage to take a grand detour from his otherwise relatively sedentary lifestyle.
As the signal got clearer, it seemed that he was still on the move – a very good thing, as I was fed up with losing hedgehogs. And then, as I caught sight of the luminous tag, I also heard him eating. Hedgehogs can be very noisy eaters. I pulled out my tape recorder and started to describe the evening’s events and how I was glad to be able to track down this last hedgehog. But slowly it dawned on me that the noise was not Little Willy eating – but of Little Willy being eaten. I pushed through the brambles, startling the voracious badger and being confronted with the gruesome remnants of another hedgehog. His head was still largely intact, but other than that there were only spines and the transmitter. That made quite an interesting bit of radio.
The atmosphere changed for me. For the final ten days of work, every excursion into the night was filled with a sense of dread. Unwisely I had switched my affection to George. Standoffish to begin with, he had mellowed and was just a fine solid hog. Wandering around with my tape recorder running, I tried to capture the essence of a night’s work, not realizing the drama I was about to capture. Everything had been going fine until it came to finding George. Conservative to a fault, he had a routine, and he had slipped out of it. The signal was mixed; perhaps he was close to a building. I couldn’t help myself as the anxiety rose, my voice tightened and tears began to well up as I stumbled through gates and across fields. But then the elation at finding him in one piece was so heartfelt, all honestly caught on tape.
A few months later, after my rather embarrassing loss of control had been broadcast on the radio, I was introduced to a record producer at a party. He was, I was surprised to find, excited to meet me. He had heard the broadcast and was so taken by the expressions of love I had for George that he wanted to sample it for a dance track . . . If he did, I have never heard it, and having recently listened to myself again, I kind of hope he didn’t.
So what can we conclude about the work? It was quite easy to forget, among the drama, that this was a serious piece of scientific study. We were trying to find out whether young hedgehogs, having been kept in captivity all winter, could cope with life in the wild. These were animals that had no previous experience of life in the wild, so would they be able to fend for themselves? Would they be able to find food? Would they be able to create their own nests? Would they be able to find them again?
At first sight, the statistics are rather grim. By the end of the study we knew that only four out of the initial twelve were alive. This would suggest a disaster and that the premise of the wildlife rehabilitators, who have been releasing hedgehogs like this for decades, was mistaken. After all, if there is only going to be a 33 per cent survival, you have to seriously look at the benefits to be gained from all the work.
But it was not quite as bad as it first seemed. We lost two transmitters, but these animals may well have survived and the fact that their corpses did not turn up, either as badger snack or roadkill, is encouraging. And of the remaining six, two were killed by cars and badgers killed three. Neither of these causes can be blamed on the rehabilitation the hedgehogs experienced with the RSPCA. We found wild hedgehogs in the area that had suffered just the same fates. That leaves only one who died when taken back into the care of the RSPCA very near the beginning of the experiment. He was a
sickly animal and perhaps should not have been released in the first place.
We showed that rehabilitated hedgehogs behave in the same way as normal hedgehogs. They feed, sleep, fornicate and die just like a wild animal. So there is good news, and if hedgehogs are released in areas where there are no badgers, their chances of survival increase dramatically.
But it would be harder to control for cars. Now this piece of work made me think about hedgehogs and cars. Yes, they are seen dead on the roads more than any other animal. Though this is in part due to the fact that their spiny coat tends to remain visible for much longer than, say, a rabbit, which will be swiftly scavenged by crows and gulls, therefore giving the impression that the hedgehogs are much more frequently run over. But it was the density of traffic that really struck me. The two that were killed were squashed on roads where, at the time of their death, there was little more than one car every hour. So perhaps the absence of traffic gave the hedgehogs a false sense of security. Perhaps busier roads are just not attractive to a hungry hedgehog.
Whatever the answer, cars are still lethal contributors to our nation’s ecology and I will keep to my bicycle as much as possible. And as for badgers? Well, there was a little part of me that gloated at the ludicrous badger cull being promoted by the UK government – that’ll teach them to mess with my hedgehogs. But the reality is that hedgehogs and badgers have been playing out this scenario for many more years than we have been interfering.
I should point out that the naming of Nigel happened before I had ever heard of Nigel Reeve, which is a good job when you consider what happened to Freya Stark on the consumption of her namesake.
For me, there was no looking back. I had learned so much about the nature of hedgehogs, but had also been given a glimpse into the nature of being a hedgehog. Just before he died, I had my most memorable night out with Nigel. I had returned to my caravan, exhausted, at around 4 a.m. As I stepped out of the cold caravan into the relatively balmy night air to clean my teeth, there was Nigel, watching me.
He waited until I had finished before moving off towards the lane. I had a feeling that he wanted me to follow. So, with toothbrush in pocket, I set off after him.
It was a very special night. After three weeks of seemingly unending rain, it was mild and dry. But while there was no rain, the hedgehog’s world must have been like a monsoon; the rich grass shed jewels of dew as he pushed through the undergrowth. Following a fearless Nigel forced me into this microcosm. Sheep-sized slugs and dew, like disco glitter balls, refracting moonbeams. But he had no eyes for this ephemeral brilliance. His world went in through his nose and that led him, snuffling, snorting and sniffing: hunting.
The noise of a hungry hedgehog is something to experience. No table manners are taught in the all too brief six-week induction to the world from mama. Nigel definitely chewed with his mouth wide open.
Risking life and limb, he chose to walk on the warm and dry tarmac, eschewing his natural habitat of cold, wet grass. I have short legs too and can appreciate this gamble. Maybe this is one of the reasons so many hedgehogs are killed on the road.
I have spent so long in the company of hedgehogs, but this hour with just the two of us, out at night together, caused a shift in my relationship with these animals. By now I was soaked and muddy, lying on the ground, observing the way he worked. He stopped, looked up at me and we both paused, nose to nose. We looked into each other’s eyes and I swear there was a flicker of something.
And then he was off, and I was left feeling ever so slightly changed.
CHAPTER
THREE
Hedgehogs
and
Birds
Love affairs are rarely simple. And while I was happily falling for these unlikely sirens, there is a darker side to the story of our relationship with hedgehogs. In fact, my first ‘professional’ encounter with hedgehogs raised a disturbing question, one I had never previously considered: is it OK to like hedgehogs?
There is a divide, more profound, some might argue, than the schism between rugby league and rugby union or Catholics and Protestants. It is the split between those with a fulsome love of the natural world and bird fanatics.
Whether it is in Orkney, at the hands of gamekeepers, out on the Uists or down in New Zealand, the bird lovers have cast hedgehogs alongside such obvious rascals as cats and rats.
North Ronaldsay
While I might complain about the conflict, there is no denying that it is what got me started on the true path of hedgehog love. Though perhaps my thanks ought to go to a postman. He was only trying to find an environmentally friendly solution to the slugs in his greenhouse. He had no idea that the two hedgehogs he picked up in his aunt’s garden in Inverness would have such an impact on his island.
The postman’s delivery was in 1972. Thirteen years later the hedgehogs on North Ronaldsay were a menace. The national press reported that there were more than 100 hedgehogs for every person on the island – and there were only ninety people. The Sunday Express ran the headline ‘A heaven for hedgehogs – island where two pets became 10,000’. The island of North Ronaldsay, the most northerly of the Orkneys, is just over 690 hectares, so that makes over fourteen hedgehogs per hectare. The best habitats on offer on the mainland can expect only one per hectare. So the islanders should have been tripping over these illegal immigrants.
The spiky interlopers were in the news because of their rapacious appetites: not only did they have an apparently rabbit-like ability to reproduce; they were accused of feasting on bird’s eggs. North Ronaldsay is a birds’ paradise, and if the hedgehogs were eating their eggs, then they had to go.
The local GP, Kevin Woodbridge, who was also the founder of the bird observatory, had been monitoring the breeding success of ground-nesting birds. That is, all the birds breeding on the island, which is flat and treeless. He had noticed that the Arctic terns, ringed plovers, lapwings and black-headed gulls had all been suffering. Far fewer young were fledging. This coincided with an increase in sightings of hedgehogs around the island, so much so that questions were asked at the island council meetings about how the hedgehogs had got to the island in the first place. ‘It was all rather embarrassing,’ admitted the postman, John Tulloch.
Hedgehogs have often been given a helping hand in their quest for global domination, jumping borders as accidental stowaways, or deliberately as ambassadors.
Indeed, John Tulloch was not the first to bring hedgehogs to the archipelago. They were first deliberately released on Orkney in 1870 and in the 1930s the crew from two cargo boats, the Cormorant and the Busy Bee, handed out hedgehogs to small boys playing on the pier at Kirkwall.
But in 1985 things were serious. One of the lighthouse keepers, Stuart Kirbest, described regularly seeing ‘in the teens’ of hedgehogs on the road each night as he returned home. Of course, Kirbest is not his real name, for there is a great shortage of surnames on North Ronaldsay – just two, in fact, Swanney and Tulloch, dominate the graveyard. People tend to refer to folk by the name of their croft. Stuart Swanney lived at Kirbest, a croft that was once the home of Ragna the Wise and her son Thorstein the Strong in the early part of the twelfth century.
Kevin thought there might be a relationship between this rapid increase in hedgehog numbers and the decline in the breeding success of his beloved birds. But to prosecute his case against the illegal aliens, he needed evidence. He needed an ecological survey, a survey that would reveal hedgehogs as little more than spiky rats with good PR. And there is no better way to get an ecological survey on the cheap than to hire an undergraduate.
He contacted his old friend Jim Fowler at Leicester Polytechnic to see if he could find help. He needed proof of the hedgehogs’ egg-eating ways. After all, this was a national emergency and the Sunday Express had spoken; two of Britain’s best-loved forms of wildlife were up against each other and no sacrifice should be spared. Who would give up their summer holidays, wrenched from parties, lovers and friends? For better or worse, the s
tudent was me.
I remember being shown slides of the island. It looked bleak, an unwelcoming wart at the conjunction of the North Sea and the Atlantic, with uninterrupted views to the Arctic Ocean. Was going there such a good idea?
But what an opportunity. The final-year project of any degree can have a tendency to be pretty bland, being done just because it needs to be done. This was a real study. There was a need to know how many hedgehogs there were and whether they were really having such a disastrous impact on the ground-nesting birds. Now, it is not that I am unmoved by the beauty of birds. Far from it, I have spent countless hours watching them, getting absorbed in their grace and beauty. But I have always found mammals more interesting. And of the mammals, it has been the smaller ones that attracted me most. I remember as a child being taken to Skomer off the Pembrokeshire coast – an island famous for its birds. We were all asked what we wanted to see and most people were excited about puffins. I asked about small mammals. I must have only just come across the term and was sweetly unaware that they tend to be nocturnal, or that Skomer has its own very special vole.
So I was a little conflicted. My instinct sided with the hedgehog, but my training as an ecologist weighed heavily upon me. Could I remain objective, just record the evidence before my eyes and not allow my love affair with wildlife to interfere?
A quick scan of the scientific literature made it obvious that no one had paid much attention to the problem of how to count hedgehogs. In fact, no one had paid much attention to hedgehogs. More was published on their physiology than on their behaviour and ecology.
Hedgehogs have been ignored for good reason: in recent times they have been considered neither pest, nor game, nor food. Benign species are often forgotten. But once the hunt was on to prove that hedgehogs weren’t so benign, well, they began to receive a lot more attention.