Can anyone water the wildlife with me?

[preservesandreserves]

it is absolutely parched here. The council grass was cut to the ground and usually it is full of flowers and higher within a few days but there are no flowers, no green, just brown dry.
I've been picking up glass bottles as they are a fire risk anyway but I'm assuming other areas are like this.

I have frozen some fruit in water in tupperware boxes and put it out on the local green, I have bowls of water in my front and back garden but I was thinking of taking some more tupperware boxes and filling them with water for the Bees, hedgehogs and whoever else would like it.

We found a dehydrated hedgehog this summer and sent it to a rescue. it was so dehydrated that his poor little eyes had sunken in.

They had him for a few days and he seemed to get better but he unfortunately passed away anyway, despite their efforts.

It really upset me and I've been filling up my bowls but I'm going to try to get round the brown field and put boxes of water down in all the hedges.

they have to be shallow or have something in there for insects and creatures to fly out.

I’ve been putting shallow bowls of water out in the garden the last few weeks, but this is a great idea to do in public places. The poor wildlife. I’ve noticed not seeing so many birds and squirrels lately 😢

Yes we've been putting out bowls of water for wildlife too. Under hedges in the lane, in the garden at various heights for birds and hedgehogs. We live on the edge of a field and have put a large container there. Know that it's used by deer, badgers, foxes and pheasants. And all the local cats! We're meant to get rain tomorrow, fingers crossed!

Thank you for this. Really pleased that you're drawing attention to the plight of wildlife in this heat.

Thank you for posting this Op, it's bad for us but so hard for the wildlife. We have water bowls front and back of house and a water feature but I'll try and find something shallow too

We always put out food and water for our hedgehog and watch the little guy on the garden cam the next morning.

I've noticed at least 3 hogs are visiting now, and all spend ages drinking : (

Has anyone else seen hedgehogs doing the "get outa my garden" dance when other hogs visit "their" garden? Tiny cute animals trying to look fierce are hilarious!

Sometimes they barge into each other. One rolls up and the other one uses it like a football. I permanently have dishes of water in front and back garden. Plus a wildlife pond. They get a lot of visitors

"Has anyone else seen hedgehogs doing the "get outa my garden" dance when other hogs visit "their" garden? Tiny cute animals trying to look fierce are hilarious!"

We found a hedgehog, started feeding it and now have 5 regular visitors of varying sizes throughout the night. Often we have two at the same time. Mostly they share, but when they do have one up man ship competitions, they do look ridiculously cute. My phone is full of little videos of them. But yeah, they're very thirsty atm and drink all the water I put out!

I'd love a hedgehog in the garden @hoglethotel . Any chance of seeing a photo please?

two large watering bowls in both front and back garden. Also two old mugs hung from trees, front and back, with water as well

oh I must remember to grab some kitten food to attract some hedgehogs.

Amazing idea with the mugs in the tree. I'm nicking that. My cupboards are fit to bursting at the minute anyway.

I also saw someone has put a bird house on a tree in a park, it's full of Bees 🐝 . I'm going to get a few bird houses and maybe a hedgehog house for the park and garden. I might grab a few for the children at Christmas and we can make a day out of finding trees to put them up.

@Daleksatemyshed

The first pic was the first hedgehog we saw - literally under our back door.

The second pic is another couple of babies / teens (they're growing fast!) that come later at night. We think the mum comes too - or at least a fully grown adult comes much later in the evening.

I am obsessed by them and can sit in the door way and watch them for ages, it's pretty much a constant stream now from 9pm to midnight, with another couple of visits around 2-4am.

Forgot to add the photos!

Thank you @hoglethotel they are lovely. We used to have a Mum and babies at our previous house and they were such fun, we gave them cat food and the noise of five eating together was so loud, and they stood on the plate, terrible table manners 🤣

Lovely thing to do OP, I leave out water in my own teeny garden but hadn’t thought of doing it in public places. One thing you can do is write to your local council if they are still cutting grass around your neighborhood- they should be allowing grass to grow long to support biodiversity etc and managing it for environmental reasons not to look neat and tidy all the time.
This summer has inspired me to dig a pond in time for next year- or at least get a bucket pond going in a shady corner. It’s really necessary to support insects and the rest of the food chain

I saw a great idea for an insect waterer too. Fill a shallow dish with pebbles and shells - a large plant pot saucer is ideal. Top up with water so that the insects can get water from the little spaces between the stones. A lot of insects drown trying to drink from bowls etc.

Very important to leave water out for all creatures if you can as many natural water sources have or are about to run dry.

There is a long standing thread on aibu about leaving water out for hedgehogs that is frequently getting bumped but for some reason never appears in active threads, so unfortunately many won’t know that thread exists. I have asked @mnhq about this, they are aware about this glitch but haven’t got to the bottom of it. Any attention that can be drawn to putting water out is a really good thing right now, so a few minutes putting a dish or bowl out could save a very thirsty creatures life.

@Lonelycrab I actually searched for threads and thought I'd better start a new one. in chat and aibu.

me and my children have made a few posters to put around bus stops and lamp posts in an effort to encourage others.

It's something I'd never thought about before.