Flynn and Fern appeared at about 9pm, just as the light was fading. I saw Fern at the bottom of the field, with a small cub and managed to get a bit of video footage. I am uploading it at the moment, so will get it on tomorrow probably. We then didn’t see the cubs again in daylight. The hedgehog appeared at about 9pm and we were able to creep out and see him ‘in the flesh’ rather than watching him on the screen. At about 10pm, we saw the cubs appear at the feeding station. It was easy to identify them: first by size and secondly by the black markings on the larger one’s legs. As we sat watching, suddenly another, much larger cub appeared! We have THREE cubs. Seeing this much larger and bolder one makes me think these cubs are actually a lot older than I first thought. They are probably closer to 10-12 weeks. There is a huge difference in size! The smallest is only a bit bigger than the hedgehog! Then there is a medium sized cub.. the other one we had seen. This third cub, as you can see by the images, is almost double the size of the smallest cub and quickly chased her off. When the large and medium cub were about, she stayed out of shot, only coming into feed when they had gone.
This first shot shows the small cub with the medium cub in the front.
In this shot, below, you can see the largest ‘new’ cub in the foreground and the medium cub behind, with Fern and Flynn behind.
… and again, the large cub in the foreground… very dark legs, and the medium cub behind with Flynn.
.. and just for comparison… the tiny cub with medium cub! Didn’t manage to get a shot with all four in. The bigger cubs always seem to chase this little one away. I would imagine they have been dominating any kills bought in by mum and dad. Combined with less food and probably being female, this one has some catching up to do.
Finally, a little bit of footage taken off of the night camera.