Water for wildlife is a vital life saver in this spell of hot weather.
There are reports coming in from all around the country of mummy and baby hedgehogs suffering from severe dehydration.
Please leave several shallow bowls of water around the garden and make sure they are topped up every day. If you don’t have a garden, you can still leave bowls of water out on the pavement edge. Also have a think about whether you could create a watering point at any local parks or green spaces.
Your water bowl doesn’t have to be fancy. I love to use terracotta plant pot bases, which are only a couple of pounds. Make sure it is fairly shallow or young hedgehogs will not be able to drink or may even drown.
This video shows how much just one single hedgehog needs to drink!
Water bowls also prevent hedgehogs venturing into and drowning in ponds.
If you fancy a stylish water bowl for your wildlife garden, I love these mosaic bowls by Josara Design, another Yorkshire maker. They come in a wide range of wildlife inspired designs.
I run a hedgehog hospital in York, England. I am also a keen wildlife gardener. My work is entirely self funded and I make handmade silver jewellery to raise funds to continue my work. If you have found this information useful, please consider making a donation or purchasing some handmade wildlife jewellery at www.littlesilverhedgehog.etsy.com
If you’d like to find out more about how to help hedgehogs and create a wildlife friendly garden, why not join me on a hedgehog talk and wildlife garden night safari.
Little Silver Hedgehog 
🙂
I got a lot of traffic. Thank you so much! x
Hi Emma – just to let you know a bit belatedly that I put a link to this post (and to the post with the video of the hedgehog self-anointing) on naturebackin.com last week. I do hope that it led to some visits to your informative site. Thanks for all you do for the hedgehogs and for helping concerned people find out what they can best do to help too.
2am: watched a hog race down the garden path on a mission. First stop the drinking station! S/he then scuttled towards the back gate, popped through the hedgehog highway, made a beeline for the HFS (hedgehog feeding station), crunched and munched for 10 mins, stopped for a drink at another water dish, then shuffled off into the garden for a forage. This hog is a regular visitor and knows where to stop for a drink and a snack. There’s lodgings too!
It is fabulous what you do for hedgehogs! Sadly many little ones are suffering in this heat. You did everything you could and thank you for helping x
I leave plenty of water out for my visiting hedgehogs plus I have a feed station and to nest boxes to any that want to stay over.I have 3 to 4 who visit regularly and sometimes a 5th one.The hubby found a young hog on friday who had obviously left its mum but had struggled to find food and water on a road and he rushed it to our wildlife vet but all though it rallied it was to far gone and sadly passed away,we were both devastated to find this out from the lady who runs the nearest rescue when she went to pick it up on Saturday.Linda said if it was found a day earlier it might have been a different outcome….so sad,xx Rachel