Who looks after sick owls at Christmas? An injured fox receives treatment (Will Storr) In an ordinary year, Tiggywinkles will treat about 3,000 hedgehogs, each one of which will need to be cleaned and fed daily. Over the same period, staff will see around 14,000 animals in total, with between 60 and 80 arriving every day in summer. Winter is a tough period for the creatures that struggle on hard frosty ground, and for the foxes that lick sweet-tasting antifreeze from car windscreens, a few of whom will be lost to kidney failure before the thaw. On Christmas Day, a large group of nurses will arrive at the hospital at 7am and spend the morning cleaning and feeding, before leaving the battered army of wild lives to the watch of the 24-hour nurse. This year, in a series of large cage-lined rooms, there are lapwings, squirrels, wood pigeons and a leopard tortoise that's just done its business over a newspaper interview with Nicky Campbell. Outdoors, there are swans, chickens, buzzards, owls, heron and red kites in aviaries, as well as cages that hold foxes and badgers and stables for other large mammals. There's a deer on a drip with a dislocated hip that's probably been hit by a car - his wooziness betrays serious concussion - and a muntjac in a blue bandage who's probably going to have his leg amputated. It all started in 1978 when Les got bored of his refrigeration business and sold it. He was living in a three-bedroom house in suburban Aylesbury with his wife, Sue, and decided to set up an animal rescue centre in his shed. "It was a hobby," he says. "I said to the local vets, the police and the RSPCA, "If you get any wildlife casualties, let me have them."" Despite a boyhood in the concrete-and-brick streets of Battersea, Les had always loved nature. "There were no animals where we lived, apart from caterpillars," he says. "Me and my mate Peter used to go take the bus to Wimbledon Common on a Saturday morning and go looking for birds" nests and lizards and things like that." As he got older, he began to read books by wildlife enthusiasts such as Gerald Durrell. My favourite was by an author called Great Owl. He was a guy from Reigate called Archie who became an American Indian and wrote all these books about hunting and trapping. This swan collided with a power cable (Will Storr) Having set his shed up, Les quickly found that people appreciated having a place to bring the injured creatures they'd sometimes come across. "The government and the veterinary profession don't seem to accept that wildlife exists," he says. Nobody's responsible for it, so it doesn't get picked up. It seemed to be a great relief to the public that, at last, there was somebody who could take these casualties. Word spread. One day, Robin Gibb pulled up in his Rolls-Royce and dropped off a partridge. "I think he's been run over," said the Bee Gee. The only person who didn't welcome Les's efforts was his next-door neighbour. We were getting deer and badgers and swans. The garden was starting to get full. He didn't like it. Tried to get us closed down. He was a pain in the a---, but he got shut up," he says, rather ominously. As we're speaking, Les's walkie-talkie crackles again: "Dennis is coming in with a fox." Ten minutes later, Dennis Lovell, from the RSPCA, pulls up in his van with a fox from St Albans. Dennis is an animal collection officer with a large gash on his forehead. "I was chasing a duck," he explains, a little shamefacedly, as he lifts out the white cage. "I got bitten by a fox," Les offers. I was putting my jacket on, I had the fox in one hand and put my arm through the sleeve and it came out in front of its mouth. The fox is very clever. If you watch a fox, it'll look before it crosses the road. I've got scars all over. I'm always being caught with antlers and things like that. Les was once injured by an epileptic badger. It was having a fit, so I covered its head with a towel, then I put my hand under it. Bang, bang, bang. I had to have two operations on my finger. The bone was sticking out. What did it feel like? I fainted. The best way to be-still a fox, it turns out, is to shove an old broom right up in its face. In the examination room, the cage is carefully opened in the presence of head nurse Clare Campbell and vet Viki Aires. Another nurse is on broom duty, holding the animal in place, while Clare carefully ties a white bandage around its gingery schnozzle to prevent nips. "If its back's broken, there's no point going any further," says Viki. But if it's a pelvis, we can fix it. After an X-ray, the fox is laid upon a raised, illuminated bed, of the type you'd find in an operating theatre. It's extremely calm. "We normally couldn't do this without sedation," says Clare, worriedly. Tiggywinkles founder Les Stocker (Will Storr) "The hard thing about working here, compared to general practice, is that the animals come in with no history," explains Viki. We know nothing about this fox at all. We're guessing she's been hit by a car, but she's been found in someone's garden. She has got a swollen... oh, yeah, her left hock's not right. We'll cast it. We'll get some bloods as well. As they work, shaving and bandaging, Viki explains that another problem with wildlife care is the general lack of clinical knowledge. "There just aren't the textbooks," she says. Les is outraged. "There's one!" he says. "There [is] one," she corrects herself. Practical Wildlife Care by Les Stocker. "It's a standard work all over the world," he says. "But," Viki continues, "there just aren't that many people interested in it." "What do you mean?" says Les who is retrieving a copy of his book from a high cupboard. There's loads of people interested in this. The success rate for saving baby birds at Tiggywinkles is 80 per cent; for all other animals it's 60 per cent (Will Storr) A common peril of this work is becoming emotionally involved with the animals. "I'm not too bad," says Viki. The things I hate are heavily pregnant deer that have been walloped by a car and we can't rescue the baby. That's really sad. They come out fully formed and ready to go. It breaks your heart. We all have a bit of a sob. "I hate it when you see animals you know have been in a terrible state for some time," says Clare. We'll have ones that have obviously been running for a number of weeks on fractured legs. "Last summer, there was an awful muntjac with a shattered leg," says Viki. Her whole body was covered in lead shot. Some of it was so old, you knew that for all her life, she'd gone around just peppered with it. We had to put it to sleep. It really got to everybody. But these occasions are exceptional. Les is careful not to hire staff who will dissolve too easily. "If you're a cuddly-Dudley bunny-hugger, you're not going to last five minutes," he says. Every animal that comes in the front door is dying. With baby birds our success rate is 80 per cent and with everything else it's 60 per cent. We're quite pleased with those figures. They have a deal with a pet crematorium in Cambridge, which picks up the corpses. They charge by the freezer load. "I've often wished I could have rescued dogs instead," he says. But I couldn't stand it. Dogs break your heart. It would kill me. Back in the treatment room, the fox has been replaced by a swan from Oxford who flew into a power cable. Its snakelike neck swipes through the air, beak snapping, as Viki and Clare try to calm it while it has its bandage changed. "It crash landed," says Clare. We had to amputate its wing. As they work, Viki is still snuffly from treating the deer with the dislocated hip earlier. "I'm allergic to them," she says. I'm not too good with squirrels either. Or frogs. I don't like them hopping around. I'm a bit phobic. There's a silence. I really don't know why I do this for a living. This muntjac may need to have his leg amputated (Will Storr) Sometimes, patients at Tiggywinkles can take the form of creatures a little less everyday than foxes and swans. "Food comes in from abroad to supermarkets, and animals get in with it," says Les. We've had scorpions, pythons, praying mantis, funny frogs. We had a wild boar called Boris three years ago. Found him in Luton. God knows where he came from. He's at a place called Amazing Animals in Chipping Norton now. Les once rescued a wallaby in Stoke Mandeville. He was near the station. I walked along the side of the railway, dodging the trains. He was very sick, but when I got hold of him he went mad. I didn't have anything to tie him with, so I used my belt. All the way back, my wife had to keep pulling up my trousers. As the sunlight begins to fade, we head towards the large aviaries. Tiggywinkles has been on this site since 1991, when the local council granted Les a 999-year lease on a peppercorn rent. "It was just a piece of land, there was nothing here," he says. So we did some fundraising, raised £1 million. A couple of big companies like BP and BT gave money, but it was 10ps, mostly. Today, corporate sponsorship is a rarity and the charity mostly runs on money that has been left in wills. How have they fared during the global financial crisis? "It's been all right, touch wood," he says. We're very good on our housekeeping. Over the last 10 years, the number of animals has increased, the staff has increased but, because we've got more efficient, the costs are similar. Inside one of the aviaries, there's a red kite with a nosebleed and another kite whose treatment is now complete and is about to be set free. Les picks it up with the bossy familiarity of a matriarch clasping a trusty handbag. "I don't think I'll ever retire," he says, the silently outraged bird grimacing in the crook of his arm. My son, Colin, he's taking over. He's got the passion, but he's allergic to most of the animals. Suddenly, Les's radio crackles. Hello, triage? We've got another casualty in reception. It's a hed-" Les turns it off and allows himself a deep sigh. Another bloody hedgehog. Click here for more Telegraph wildlife articles