Plea to help our spiky friends in hot weather
Residents are being urged to leave bowls of water out in the garden to help wildlife such as hedgehogs over the hot spell.
Joan Lockley, of West Midlands Hedgehog Rescue, has spent the last 20 years rescuing hedgehogs including six-week-old Tiny and says the nocturnal animals are desperately in need of help at this time of the year.
The wildlife rescue volunteer says: "They are dying in this weather and by the time they get to me they are in a really bad state and dehydrated because their kidneys have been affected.
"People tend to keep bird baths topped up with water, but because they are in bed when hedgehogs come out they don't see them and don't realise they visit their gardens in the night. Hedgehogs cannot reach bird baths so a shallow receptacle on the ground is best.
"Hedgehogs shouldn't be out in the day time and if they are it means they are desperate. Folks should make a habit of leaving a shallow bowl of water in the garden for them and to top it up,"she explains.
She took in more than 800 in the last year, nursing them to health at the base, in Leveson Avenue, Cheslyn Hay, Staffordshire, before releasing them back into the countryside.
To donate to service email joan.lockley@talktalk.net
