Hedgehog Ears by by codepo8
Later this week up to 100,000 Brits will be going to their yards and counting badgers, hedgehogs, foxes, toads and moles. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds got 62,000 people to count last year when they started out.
The survey “is by far the biggest survey on garden mammals ever!” the site boasts. I’ve certainly never seen anything like it in the U.S. It’s a fantastic resource for wildlife watchers because you can see which counties have the most of which animals. Sure, it’s not totally scientific. People self-select to do it. And if I had a yard full of hedgehogs, I’d be filling out surveys and telling everyone I know about it.
The 2009 results showed a delightful amount of wildlife. In Wales, 9% of people who took the survey see badgers at least once a month and a quarter of the English live with have little hedgehogs on their property. What kind of magical place is this? Did anyone report any talking bunnies?
The survey just takes an hour, so they don’t demand that–unlike similar bird surveys–the animal doesn’t have to show up just at that moment. They let people report sign of an animal ask generally how often they’re seen. Otherwise you might get a whole lot of nothing from the survey.
As you might guess from its name the RSPB is more interested in birds than mammals. They also ask about cats, which they estimated recently that Britain’s cats kill 27 million birds a year.
I certainly hope Audubon or Cornell jumps on the bandwagon and starts doing mammal surveys. Even if they’re only doing it to find threats to birds. I noticed the RSPB lets people from other countries register. They may just be humoring me and I may be just annoying them with useless data, but I signed up to count.
| Animal | Badger | Hedgehog | Red Squirrel |
| top UK count | Pembrokeshire, Wales
29% |
Shetland, Scotland
43% |
Buteshire, Scotland 54% |
| top England county | Somerset
24% |
Huntingdonshire
42% |
Cumberland
14% |
“This is by far the biggest survey on garden mammals ever!” the site boasts. I’ve never heard of anything similar in the U.S.
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