Borrow a wildlife camera for your garden!

WEAct Woking Wildlife camera scheme – a great project for families!

Woking Environmental Action run a project called Woking Hedgehogs to encourage residents of Woking to make their outside areas as hedgehog friendly as possible. They have teamed up with Surrey Wildlife Trust and are asking residents to report any hedgehog sightings (see link below). They are also loaning out wildlife cameras for households to set up in their outside spaces. As a lover of British wildlife, I was keen to give this a go.

I signed up on their website using the link and received a quick response to tell me that I was on a waiting list and they would be in touch when a camera became available. I was very pleased when their volunteer contacted me to arrange to collect the camera from Woking Library. I had already receive an email with a camera guide and was shown how to operate it at the library.

I have to report that the whole experience was a great pleasure. The camera was easy to set up and although I had been warned that its placement was trial and error, I had no problems finding a couple of places with a good view of our garden.

We had success with an inquisitive squirrel, the neighbour’s cat, our regular wood pigeon, and a fox (we knew foxes visited our garden at night but haven’t seen one for a long time). Unfortunately, no hedgehog sightings!.

The only downside was that the camera screen was very small – it was only after I downloaded the SD card that we spotted the night shot of the fox, which was a white shadow on the small screen. The wind was also an issue as, at first, we had a lot of photo’s with nothing in – I realised that a swaying plant was triggering the camera, so moved it a little.

I was sad to return it at the end of our two weeks and would love to repeat this in the Spring, when our garden has more visiting birds than this time of year. We have had a hedgehog in the garden just once in the last few years, but have installed a hedgehog house recently in hope of encouraging little visitors. My children are all grown up, but I wish this had been available when they were little; they would have loved it!

Running fox.

For information on the project use this link:

Woking Hedgehogs – Woking Environment Action     

Sarah Phillips