If you see a hedgehog out during the day, it has something wrong with it - 100% guaranteed!
Hedgehogs sunbathing are
not showing healthy behaviour. I found a little hedgehog yesterday and was told by a dogwalker that it had been there the day before too - despite the fact that it was right on the path next to a field of horses (and everyone here goes to talk to these particular horses, they're very popular) nobody had picked it up. I took it home when I found it, but quickly realised it had flystrike. Unfortunately, flystrike is extremely damaging if it isn't caught quickly - I tried to float the hedgehog in salt water to remove as many maggots as I could, but when I started picking off egg clusters, it opened its eyelids and I realised that the poor little hoglet didn't have eyes anymore. Maggots had eaten them and were still in the eye sockets. If only I had been walking the dog the day before, maybe I would have found it - or if only someone had thought to pick it up the day before - perhaps the fly eggs wouldn't have hatched.
As it was, I had to take the hedgehog to the vets to be put to sleep, so at least I prevented its death from being any more drawn out than it had to be.
You can help hedgehogs. Here's a page of basic first aid for hedgehogs you find:
www.leicesterhedgehogrescue.co… If they don't weigh enough in the winter, they won't survive, so it's worth weighing any you find wandering around after 30th September and during the winter. But if they're out during the day at all, there is definitely something wrong.
And please don't use metaldehyde slug pellets (the blue ones). They either kill too many slugs (hedgehogs don't have enough food) or worse still, hedgehogs may eat the poisoned slugs and be poisoned themselves, which is fatal. I use wool slug pellets (SlugGone) which slugs hate crawling over, they don't like the fibrous texture and lanolin - but they won't end up with any toxins in their bodies that will poison slug-eating predators!