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Tuesday 2 June 2009

Meet Scratchy



Hello and welcome back to Hill Top Tails. Again it has been a great day weatherwise - the view here at Walland Farm is quite breath-taking.
Beth from the Hartland Wildlife Rescue called in today. She had four baby hedgehogs, which were rescued and she is now hand rearing them - all less than a week old, and she also had an injured baby housemartin. It's spring, all the young are arriving, and this is the time of year when she gets really busy.
Introducing you to Scratchy - another member of the Mini Zoo. Scratchy is Greg's Russian Dwarf Hamster or Winter-White - he/she is grey in colour with a dorsal stripe during the summer and turns almost entirely white in the winter.
Dwarf Winter White Russian Hamsters are approximately 8-10cm in length when full grown with males being larger than females. They have expandable cheek pouches. Russian Hamsters have furry feet and are sometimes referred to as the Furry or Hairy Footed Hamster.
Scratchy is fascinating to watch, especially as he changes colour - we all thought that perhaps he was getting old and that was why he turned white, but this spring he turned back to his grey!
Scratchy will take food from you and likes to climb upside down on the bars of his cage.
Work on the woodland playground is still continuing and hopefully it will be finished at the weekend.
Does anyone know what the spider is that was on our blog of Sunday the 31st of May?
Thanks for joining us, we'll be back with more stories tomorrow.


3 comments:

  1. BILLY P WRITES: I think it is probably Araniella cucurbitina the cucumber spider. I wonder if you can guess how ikt got its common name

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  2. Russian dwarf hamsters are really interesting. There are two species of the Russian dwarf hamster-- the winter white and the Campbell's. Some authorities regard them as subspecies of a single species, for in capitivity, it's not uncommon to see them interbred. And they can produce fertile offspring. When I was going through my hamster phase as a boy, I wanted a winter white rather badly. I could not find one. I talked myself out of buying a Chinese hamster, which have long, mouselike tails.

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  3. Thank you for taking the time to post your comments. We all really enjoy them and hope you enjoy our blog.
    Thank you.

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