Country diary: I thought I was poking a hedgehog’s nest. I was wrong | Claire Stares

Langstone, Hampshire: Tree bumblebees are generally placid, but they’re not keen on someone prodding their home with the end of a bamboo cane

Last summer, one by one, all our visiting hedgehogs fell victim to the road.

For the first time in years, the hedgehog house beneath a purple-leaved elder in a secluded corner of the garden sat empty over winter.

Then a few weeks ago I found fresh faeces on the patio, glistening with fragments of undigested insect exoskeleton – a sure sign that a prickly visitor was about.

A few nights of camera trapping revealed a rotund adult with a distinctive arrowhead-shaped mark on its rump.