Hedgehogs – oh how we love our elusive, little prickly visitors. Having established in collaboration with our neighbours that we did indeed have a prickle of them visiting at night - genuine collective noun! - we decided to invest in some technology to capture them on camera… but how little we knew about the comings and goings in our garden at night!

The camera we installed - a Crenova 20MP 1080P Wildlife Camera - comes with an infra red light and wide angle motion detectors. In the pitch black of our garden the infra red light is essential, and although the images aren’t quite BBC quality it’s lovely to see what the local wildlife gets up to at the bottom of the garden.

We set up our bargain little hedgehog house at the end of the hedge where there’s a gap – mainly because my daughter has an assumption that hedgehogs live in hedges – and we put out hedgehog food every night (sourced at Brandon Marsh of course).

It turns out to be the perfect place, as the gap behind the hedgehog house is wide enough for all shapes and sizes of wildlife to visit, whilst also providing a handy escape route. I then had to work out how to mount the camera in a suitable spot nearby, so it’s strapped onto the supports of a water butt on the corner of the shed!

Now that the mice have found the food source I’m not entirely sure how much of it is getting eaten by the hedgehogs, but I’m hopeful that it’s keeping them fed and allowing them to raise a litter; they’re nesting somewhere in a neighbour’s garden I think. We garden organically so these prickly visitors are safe with us - and we can’t wait to see what turns up next!