As you well know by now, it is Hedgehog Awareness Week - a great opportunity to help hedgehogs (though I am sure you are all doing that all the time!) But this is an update to alert you to another bit of Hedgehog Awareness ... the photo was sent to me by my dear old friend Gillie - who was passing it on from ... well, it is a complicated chain.

Anyway - while that will not be winning any awards for wildlife photographer of the year, it does tell a very interesting story. In Bristol there is a garden room - in which is a great big bean bag - on top of which was another cushion. It is with good fortune that yesterday afternoon the person who was about to sit on the bean bag moved the other cushion first ... revealing a snoozing hedgehog! 

This is not the first story of a hedgehog making itself comfortable among the soft furnishings ... I met someone at an event a while back who showed me the photo of the hog who had woken him by knocking on his bedroom door (first floor) - it had been a hot day and he had left the backdoor open. He relocated his visitor - and when he went to his attic office the next morning he found the hog had made it up another flight of stairs, leaving a 'contribution' under his desk!

You know, this would have probably been a more popular update if I had used a photo of the birthday boy ... for today Chris Packham's day - and all he wants is some help ... 

The last time I visited his New Forest home the final touches to his new gates were being completed - as the last lot had been subject to a very dramatic arson attack - this was not the work of a random individual but someone who knew what they were doing. He has been in receipt of many threats - death threats and threats of violence that he has been advised to treat seriously. Though I got the feeling the threats to kill his beloved dogs Sid and Nancy were even more upsetting. 

With this as background, and in response to specific falsehoods, Chris has launched a defamation case against the editor and two contributors to Country Squire Magazine, now happening in the High Court in London. His friend and colleague, Ruth Tingay, has set up a fundraiser to help cover some of the costs of this action - and my birthday gift to Chris is to ask as many of you who are able to help him! The link to the fundraising page gives you far more details of the case. 

Wishing you all a lovely spring day (hopefully!)