Recently, volunteers Colin and John decided to try to capture our native fauna in the Botanic Garden, specifically hedgehogs. This is after being inspired by Colin’s neighbour who has nightly hedgehog visitors to their own feeder in their garden. These creatures can be very shy and are equipped with an extremely strong sense of smell, which may explain some of our findings so far.
On the first day, September 21st, our cameras were helpfully tested by crows carrying out a “murder” investigation, but the real finding was our local fox patrolling the grounds. The following night, we had our first appearance of one of the Botanic Garden cats, which will become a regular feature in this blog we suspect as they were also the only animal spotted on the 23rd. They seem highly interested in the food in the feeder.
The 24th brought a new sighting, rabbits! They don’t seem interested in the feeder, more in the grass surrounding it, so long as there are no predators. There was a potential second rabbit in the background, but the image was too blurry to be certain.
Cats once again were the main sight on the 25th, with nothing on the cameras for the 26th.
The 27th was highly eventful as we had our first proper confirmation of multiple rabbits living in the Botanic Garden, with 2 sighted together (2 buddy rabbits). But of course, the week would not be complete without another cat sighting.