About this objectHedgehogs roam gardens at night, eating slugs, earthworms, and insects. This makes them popular with gardeners but they also take frogs, small rodents, fish, young birds and birds’ eggs.
Female hedgehogs with between two and as many as ten youngsters are a common sight in summer. Male hedgehogs are always solitary. When threatened or alarmed, a hedgehog instinctively rolls up into a ball, protected by up to 6,000 sharp spines. They are sometimes eaten by foxes and badgers and others become road casualties but most die in their sleep of starvation during hibernation. Hedgehogs hibernate during cold weather but often wake during mild winter periods.