Helping Hedgehogs
Tips and advice on how to welcome this special guest to your garden
red-letter day, as there were fewer than 30 pairs in the UK at the time.
Now I can see that many and more, passing through the Chiltern Hills. It just shows what conservation can do. Along with the White Storks in Sussex and the White-tailed Eagles in Scotland, it gives me real hope.
Throughout the 1990s, my late wife Jo and I double-manned trucks all over Europe and Scandinavia. We would be away from home for up to four weeks at a time. Like me, she was an avid birder. When we parked up in foreign climes, the order of the day was kettle on and binoculars out.
Portugal is a birder’s paradise. Watching a Woodchat Shrike in a tree one day, a Hoopoe landed on the same branch! A Crested Tit once fluttered inches from our open window in a lay-by, and the sight of a Black-winged Kite near Lisbon almost caused me to crash!
We would often be parked in a corner of a field for several days on end, waiting for potatoes or beetroot to be dug up and loaded onto our trailer. Bee-eaters would follow the plough just a few feet from our truck, Black Kites and Griffon Vultures seemed to fill the sky, and we once spent a whole day watching Hen Harriers quartering a meadow and passing food mid-air.
Spain was a firm favourite with us. From mountains to savannas to cities, there was such a vast range of habitats you couldn’t help but add to your bird list. Azure-winged Magpies, Cranes, Egyptian Vultures and Sardinian Warblers, all seen and enjoyed while being paid to travel around Europe.
We had our own names for our favourite places. Golden Oriole Pass, after our first sighting of this beautiful bird, and Vulture Valley, where you could look down into a gorge and watch Griffon Vultures soaring below. Then there was Roller Alley, where the roadside telephone wires always had a dozen or more of these amazingly colourful birds whose aerobatics made us gasp.
We did a lot of night-time driving and saw many owls and creatures we couldn’t always identify. As dawn came, we’d have Red Kites snatching the night’s roadkill up, often just a few feet in front of our truck. My foot would automatically go for the brakes as they swooped in and away in a flash.
During our travels we also saw Alpine Swifts in Italy, Avocet in Denmark and a Subalpine Warbler in Gibraltar. Amazing birds, amazing times.
I was very fortunate to be able to earn a living driving my mobile hide (!) around Europe, and it gave me more special days than I could ever have dreamt of in my I-Spy childhood.
WE HAD OUR OWN NAMES FOR OUR FAVOURITE PLACES. GOLDEN ORIOLE PASS, AFTER OUR FIRST SIGHTING OF THIS BEAUTIFUL BIRD