Stage 2 - Hibernacula and Hedgehogs

After the trees were topped, we were on a mission to build the first hibernaculum before the newts started looking for somewhere to overwinter. We excavated a hole about two square metres and then filled it in with bricks, rubble, pipes and logs.

We were gifted a hedgehog box from Ashley Arbon and constructed a second one from a plywood sheet donated by our good friend Bob Price, and these were installed. At that time we had something of an invasion of badgers who had set up their latrine near the wooden footbridge, leaving many little poops in shallow holes all around the bench. For this reason we piled willow logs on the boxes to make sure they couldn’t be turned over by a hungry badger. Thankfully the badgers seemed to have moved on now, and some other locality must be benefiting from their toilet waste.

We manages some planting of yellow rattle and Michaelmas daisy seeds to get started, with many more to come next year.

In the spring a second work party dug another slightly smaller hibernaculum the other end of the meadow. 

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