Listen EP

4 track EP of dark sounds by me.

Daylight Hedgehogs and Snuffling in the Bushes.

What are the chances - sitting in the garden at 8.30pm last Friday night, with bf, when a hedgehog appears? As luck would have it, bf was trying out a new long lens, photographing garden birds on the bird feeder, using his camera that takes stills and video. Here's the footage.

I posted the footage in the Warrington Hedgehog Forum on facebook . I'm aware that if hedgehogs are out in daylight, it usually means that there is something wrong with them, and they should be taken to a local rescue to be checked out.

This hog looked quite fit, and given that it's mid summer it was difficult to say whether 8.30pm was too early for it to appear. Friday night was quite cold and dark for the time of year, so maybe the hog was just a bit confused and woke too early.

Anyway, my local hedgehog expert suggested keeping an eye out for this one, and if possible catching it and weighing it. So, on Monday night at 8.15pm, I took a seat in the garden, with weighing scales, gardening gloves and hedgehog box at the ready, and waited...

The hog didn't appear until 10.15pm by which time I'd provided an evening meal to a few mosquitoes; spotted a frog behind some flower pots; a mouse in the hedge and some bats overhead. A tranquil balmy evening - better than telly.

I did manage to catch and weigh the hog, which weighed in at 750g which is pretty healthy, so no cause for concern. I also took the advice of local hog expert and put a very small identifying mark on this one, using some apricot white matt emulsion paint dabbed lightly on some prickles, so now I'll recognise it if I see it again. I've decided to call it Apricot.

Update: I saw this hog throughout the summer, after dusk, not during the day. It was a regular visitor to the feeding box. I also spotted it the following year, 2016 - again in mid summer, after dark. The paint mark still visible, but quite faint. So, it would appear that in this instance we did the right thing; the hog appeared to be out a little early, at a time of year when the days are at their shortest.

I've also been out recording the snuffling sounds that hedgehogs sometimes make. 

If you have ever heard this loud snuffling noise out in the garden late at night, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's a big scary creature hiding in the bushes. The sound can be quite loud. I've read that it is usually a female hog responding to the advances of an amorous male hog during the mating season. The males will circle the females at this time, trying to win them over.  I've witnessed hedgehogs checking each other out and making snuffling noises, so I usually just back off and head indoors leaving them to it. There's a picture of two cheeky looking hogs in this slide show, eating a pile of worms. Minutes prior to the picture being taken they were having a bit of a fight behind some flower pots, but with no snuffling noises. Peace broke out once I tipped a load of meal worms onto the path. 

NB. It's not a good idea to feed meal worms to hogs too often. Although the hogs love them and will eat them in preference to almost anything else, the worms are not very nutritious. Too many meal worms in a hog's diet can result in calcium deficiency. Cat biscuits are much better for them. 

Kanye luvs Rosemary tru luv 4 eva

My mate Rosemary thought that Kanye West had followed her on twitter, so true to form I mercilessly took the piss. But, it turns out I was wrong. Whilst trawling through the internet re. the BBC Glastonbury subtitles debacle, I stumbled across this unseen part of Kanye's Glastonbury set. Who knew?

 

Don't Mess With The Birds

I've been noodling with sounds again and have accidentally turned into an experimental musician. It's easily done: one minute you're marvelling at the beauty of the birdsong in the garden and before you know it you've recorded and uploaded it into audacity, looped it, snipped it, reversed it and put a load of effects on it until it sounds like a terrible psychotic nightmare sequence from an early 1970s English horror film.

This tune was made using a short recording of some birdsong, featuring a song thrush (I think) and some other random garden noises. The result was this creepy soundscape.

I was quite pleased to learn that the tune was picked up by Markus Koehler who presents a show called 'Difficult Music For Difficult People'  broadcast from Hamburg.

Here's the edition of the show from a couple of weeks ago that opens with my track, followed by a jingle for the show that Owen and me did for Markus.

Difficult Music For Difficult People (8 June 2015) by Difficult Music on Mixcloud

On evenings when the moon is full...

 I've been taking photos of skulls made by Vicious Noodles. 
This one inspired a little poem that I added to a skull photo taken on the eve of the full moon.

The Scrap Mag

My experimental foray into minimalistic music creation has found its way onto The Scrap Mag. Jolly good!

Making A Hedgehog Feeding Station

I've been feeding garden hedgehogs outside for years, but this year I decided to build a hedgehog feeding station because of the large number of cats in the local area. I was putting food out last year up until early December, but because of the cats, I was putting a lot of mealworms out, and not so many cat biscuits. 

During this time, I found a young hoglet, that weighed in at only 500g which is much too small for a hedgehog to survive hibernation; ideally they should be at least 700g. If they go into hibernation without enough fat on them, they will not survive the winter. I took the hoglet to Withington Hedgehog Rescue and told them about my dilemma with the cats. They suggested that I build a hedgehog feeding station, which has the added advantage of enabling you to leave some dry catfood available through the winter, for any occasions when the hedgehogs might wake up for a short while to seek out food.

I also learned that whilst the hedgehogs love mealworms, it's best not to provide too many as the hedgehogs will happily eat the mealworms to the exclusion of everything else. I have noticed that the hedgehog will pick out the mealworms during its first visit of the evening, then will return later on to eat the biscuits, presumably if there's been nothing better available in the undergrowth (although the garden is FULL of snails, and is chemical free). 

There is a lot of advice online about what food to put out for hedgehogs but do remember that the old wives' tale about them liking bread and milk is a dangerous myth as they are lactose intolerant. Bread and milk will make them ill. I've offered a variety of foodstuffs in my hedgehog café including hard boiled egg, which got a big 'no thanks' as well as crushed unsalted peanuts and sunflower hearts. Dry, chicken flavoured cat biscuits with a sprinkling of mealworms seems to be the favourite. Even the snails like them. 

So, that's enough about what to feed the hedgehogs. Here's a slideshow that I made showing you how to make a place to feed them.  Please also make sure that you leave drinking water available for hedgehogs. I haven't put the drinking water inside the feeding station as the hedgehogs walk through everything and can make a right mess, but there is a bowl of water immediately outside the box. 

I tried to find instructions online on how to cut the hole as DIY isn't my strong point. In the event, I just went for it and stabbed into the box with a sharp knife before using scissors, which probably isn't the best method. However, if you read the comments beneath the video via youtube there are some helpful tips from Lorcan Adrain, who says,

"An easy way to cut the entrance is to drill a hole in each of the four corners.  You need a fast drill and some wood.  Put the wood against the plastic and drill through the plastic into the wood. 
You can use a bit of cardboard cut to 10cm  x 10cm as a template and mark the corners with a permanent maker.
Use just a junior hacksaw blade (£1.50 for 10) and saw from hole to hole."

Useful links

BRITISH HEDGEHOG PRESERVATION SOCIETY

Warrington Hedgehog Forum

Hedgehog Street

This hog no longer needs to sit in its dinner to keep the cats away!

He's only making plans for Boris

So, London mayor Boris Johnson has gone ahead and bought a water cannon for London without consulting the home secretary...

He's only making plans for Boris

wolf in clown clothing he's everyone's chum

buffoon buys a cannon - all harmless fun

reclaim the streets from the plebs and the scum

affable, laughable chimp with a gun

when taken to task affects naughty boy

bearing to riffs re. the next hosepipe ban

thinks us too half soaked to see through the ploy

power by stealth, it's all going to plan

circus confetti won't  wash anymore

nor will a balloon to comb a  man's hair

who thinks he's a shoo-in cleaning the floor

of all in his path to be Tory heir

apparent despite his bumbling schtick

we know he's transparent; he thinks we're thick

©Helên Thomas 12/6/14

Is this the most useless hedgehog in the history of hedgehogs ever?

Noise Experiment 1

This is the tale of a solitary old man, who lives near the edge of a coniferous forest, next to a spirit lake. Here he passes his time using a lathe to craft beautiful artifacts. The spirits of the undead, who cannot find peace, bring him their long bones to fashion into new treasures. As he does so, the lathe exudes a strange music as the troubled spirits are finally laid to rest.

Experimental noise made using Korg Monotron Duo, a sample of a church bell and audacity software.

Video created 20th September 2018

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