I’ve been busy building shelves today so I didn’t have time for badger watching in the evening. However, this did give me the perfect excuse to go out after dark and try out my night vision scope.
Having used it out in the field I’m now in a better position to evaluate it. Like most NV scopes it enhances the natural light, so on a moonlit night it should be pretty effective, and for darker nights (like tonight) it has a built-in infra-red torch which really does make a difference. The manufacturer’s claimed range of 100m seems quite accurate. Actually using it took some getting used to. The image is fairly bright, so although it does allow you to see in the dark it pretty well destroys your night vision at the same time.
I decided to see if I could spot any badgers feeding, so I went up to the pasture field. I know there are badgers here every night, so it seemed a good place to try out the scope. I went to my favourite haunt – the stag-headed oak at the top of the hill. The wind was blowing in my face as I looked towards the wood, so I was well placed to watch any badgers as they came out onto the field.
The church clock was just striking eleven when I saw the first badger. Success! It was in a hurry, and trotted past me quickly. I found out another limitation of the scope, and that is the relatively small field of view. I lost sight of the badger when it went behind the tree, and try as I might I couldn’t find it again.
Standing up, I saw two more badgers by the edge of the wood, but as I watched they went back into the trees. Since the wind was in my favour I decided to get closer so that I could spot them as they came out again. Ten minutes later another badger appeared from the other side of the field. Like the others, this one turned and trotted off almost as soon as I focused on it.
Now I was getting concerned. All the badgers I’d seen had run off pretty quickly. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The idea of having an NV scope wasn’t so I could see in the dark (I’ve got a perfectly good torch for that, and it only cost £10 from Tesco), it was so that I could see in the dark without disturbing the wildlife. So far it seemed that the badgers were fairly disturbed. Can badgers see infra-red light? The IR torch on the scope gives out a dim red visible light, but surely not enough to scare a badger? I’ve shone red torches on them before and they didn’t seem to mind as much.
Perhaps I had committed some basic error of fieldcraft. Perhaps the badgers could see me silhouetted against the paler sky. I returned to the tree so I would be less conspicuous, poured a cup of tea from my flask, and gave the badgers time to settle down again.
Ten minutes later I scanned the field again. There was another badger, and once again it ran off when I focused the scope on it.
I didn’t want to disturb the badgers’ feeding, so I decided to head down to the wheat field and see if I had any more luck. Sure enough, when I got there I saw two more badgers just inside the field. Both scampered off quickly but they were downwind of me, so this is perhaps excusable. I waited a while but they didn’t return.
The church clock rang midnight and I decided to call it a night. I didn’t want to disturb the badgers any further, and besides, even badger watchers need to sleep at some point. I kept the scope on though, and at the bottom of the field I came across yet another badger who promptly disappeared into the corn.
In some ways it was a good night. I’ve seen more badgers away from the sett than ever before. The bad news is that I’ve only seen their backsides as they’ve turned and ran. Rather than opening up a new dimension in my study of badgers, the scope has so far only helped me on my way to becoming an expert on badger tails! It was frustrating to be in a field full of badgers but not to get a good look at them.
So was it the scope, or was it something I did wrong? Can badgers see infra-red, or was it just one of those nights? I need to make a few more trips before I can really answer this.
Tales from the Wood - The Diary of a Badger Watching Man 
Hi Badgerman,
The only time I have really bothered with an infrared scope was when I was taking part in a Police/RSPCA surveillance of a Park in a large city. Someone had been killing the badgers by beating them to death with a blunt object – the toll was in double figures. In an attempt to identify the killer, the park was patrolled at night with groups of people armed with night scopes and radios/phones.
Like you I found that the scope blatted your night vision, which then took some time to recover. Also the field of vision is a problem.
In the end I used to use just regular binoculars most of the time, as they can gather a bit more light and you get the magnification. I would restrict my scope time to just checking out areas of really dark shadow.
The ultimate test for the scope came when we were descending down a steep slope, and we heard the thunder of hooves – a herd of red deer where approaching.
I was the only one who could make out the herd with my night vision and I told every one to stand stock still. The herd was split into two groups and they ran on either side of us. I could bearly see them, but I could smell, hear and feel them – those that had used the scope were blind and found the whole thing terrifying.
In the end I decided that I would just try to cultivate my night vision, following Chris Ferris’s example. She points out in her books that the best night to see badgers is when the moon is shielded by cloud cover. This is because the moon light is sort of diffused or reflected off of the clouds and it gives a more even type of light. On a bright full moon you tend to get patches of bright glare and lots of dark shadows (which is where the animals will be)!
If you have not read Chris Ferris’s diarys then I would throughly recommend them – her badgers got so used to her that they used to come and greet her and then let her wander around with them! Now imagine the photo’s and footage you could get then!
Thanks Josie – great story about the covert surveillance and the deer. It sounds like you’ve got some interesting tales of your own there!
Like you, I’ve managed in the past by just letting my night vision develop. I’ve also used 7×50 binoculars, which really do make a difference in low light. I can usually see quite clearly with them in moonlight.
I think I need to get the hang of the NV scope. With the infra-red it opens up the possibility of badger watching in a dark wood. In previous years my badger watching has stopped around September when the nights start drawing in, but the scope could offer a way around this. What concerns me is that the badgers seemed to react to the IR torch, but it could just have been something I was doing. Like I say, I need to get more experience of this.
It is a source of constant shame to me that I have never read the Chris Ferris books. I’ve got them, and I’ve read half of the first one a few times, but somehow I always get distracted and never finish it. It’s odd, since the subject matter is right up my street (or should I say ‘right in my field’?). I really must finish them one day.
I have occasionally used a ‘poor mans’ version – a maglite with dark red cellophane over the lens, it gives off just a bright red light & that isn’t infa-red, nevertheless it doesn’t seem to bother the badgers – my guess is that there is somewhere with richer pickings – perhaps a carcass, maybe some courting hedgehogs even ??
: )
I’m not aware that anything other than some reptiles sense infra red. The other end of the spectrum is more likely (for example deer) but I’ve since heard that mustelids may well have a sensitivity. It will be a very good experiment to find out.
By the way, might it be the whine of the battery or the IV torch? Some NV stuff I’ve tried has a high pitched whine that is barely detectable to us.
[…] the last time I used the night vision scope it seemed to cause a reaction in the badgers (see Fieldnotes: 25th July 2009 – First night vision session). Although the infra-red light from the scope is supposedly invisible, the badgers seemed to be […]
[…] used my night vision scope twice now (see Fieldnotes: 25th July 2009 – First night vision session and Fieldnotes: 6th March 2010 – A frosty night at the badger sett). On both occasions the […]