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Fieldnotes: 25th July 2009 – First night vision session

Posted in Fieldnotes, tagged , on July 26, 2009| 6 Comments »

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.

Night Vision TreeThe 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.

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The night belongs to me…

Posted in Background, tagged on July 23, 2009| 5 Comments »

I mentioned that my efforts to track down and watch badgers after they have left the sett have only been quite fleeting so far.  Well, things are going to change.

To celebrate my 2½ week anniversary in my new job, I’ve bought myself a night vision scope.  Check out this bad boy:

Night Vision MonocularActually, I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while.  I’ve just been waiting until one came up cheap on eBay.

I haven’t tried it out properly yet, only around the garden, but it really does work.  The image is green and a bit fuzzy but you can see in the dark.  This could potentially change my badger watching habits a lot.  I’m definitely going to spend some time out in the fields this weekend.

Night Vision View

If people think it’s suspicious that I go out in the evenings with a camouflage jacket and a pair of binoculars, what on earth will they think about me going out with a night vision device too?

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Bird Update

Posted in Birds, tagged , , , , on July 22, 2009| 2 Comments »

Goldfinches - adult on the left, juvenile on the right

Goldfinches - adult on the left, juvenile on the right

Just a quick note to say that my birdwatching efforts are progressing nicely.

Ever since we started putting out niger seeds for the birds last year, we’ve had a regular gang of Goldfinches visiting the garden.  They’re very good-looking birds, and they have an amazing capacity for sitting on the feeder and eating steadily for up to half an hour at a time.  Well, I’m pleased to say that we have some new additions to the Goldfinch flock.  This week we’ve had at least two juvenile Goldfinches coming to the feeder.

Blackcap?

Blackcap?

I’ve added two new species to my list.  The first caused me some difficulty.  I first heard its song, which was very striking, but the bird itself was perched on the top of a tall tree on a foggy day.  After much poring over photographs and field guides, I’m now pretty sure that it was a Blackcap.  If anyone knows differently, then please do let me know!  It won’t be the first time that I’ve been embarrassed by an obvious blunder…

I saw the second new bird on Sunday.   I take a walk early on Sunday mornings.  I usually take a flask of tea and stop for breakfast with my back to a small copse and look out over the fields.  On this Sunday I varied my routine, and sat inside the copse for a change.  It was quite remarkable how many small birds appeared after I had been sitting still for ten minutes or so. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a good look at most of them, but one was unmistakable.  It was a smallish brown bird with a thin, longish beak.  It would fly to the bottom of a tree and then walk up the trunk, spiralling round it as it climbed.  It was a Treecreeper, no doubt about it.

Again, not especially rare birds, but I’m enjoying identifying them, particularly as they’re no more than half a mile from my house.  Who says you have to travel miles to tick off birds?

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Badger tracking

Posted in Fieldnotes, Tracking, tagged , , , , on July 19, 2009| 4 Comments »

Badger tracks

Badger tracks

You may recall that I dealt with a roadkill badger a couple of weeks ago.  I was concerned that the badger had been killed next to a field that forms part of my usual Sunday morning tracking/ birdwatching walk, and I hoped that the dead badger wasn’t the one that I had become accustomed to tracking.

Well, I went for my usual Sunday walk this morning, and I’m pleased to say that the badger is alive and well and still making tracks.

Tracking really is a fascinating activity.  I spent an hour totally absorbed by the animal tracks in a hundred yards of footpath up one single field.  Over the last 24 hours a badger, a fox, several Chinese Water Deer and a small herd of fallow deer had all walked up this path.  It was a tracker’s heaven!

We’ve had a combination of rain showers and sunshine recently, so the normally hard-packed clay in this field is soft in places, but still firm in others.  Many of the tracks showed up only as smudges in the fine silt on top of the clay.  In a strange way it is more satisfying to find and follow these faint images.

Here’s another set of badger tracks.  Note the claws on the front paw on the right.

Badger tracks 1

Here’s where the fox and badger walked side by side (actually, the fox was there first – on the next set of prints I found that the badger’s track overlay the fox’s)

Badger and fox tracks

The badger’s front paw print is on the top left, its rear paw on the bottom left and the fox on the right.

Who would have thought that a short stretch of path could prove so interesting – and so informative.  If you’ve never tried tracking then give it a go next time you’re out and about.  It really does add an extra dimension to your knowledge of the wildlife in your area.  And it’s great fun too!

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Fieldnotes: 18th July 2009 – Birds and beasts

Posted in Fieldnotes, tagged , , , , on July 19, 2009| 9 Comments »

I think it’s time I got back to some serious badgerology.

I was up at the wood on Saturday, and an interesting evening it was too. Firstly, the badgers have started feeding on the wheat in the wheat field.  This seems to become a regular food source as soon as it ripens.  The badgers seem to have a simple way of getting at the wheat – they trample down the stalks and then pull off the grain.  You can see the patches where they have been feeding.

Badger feeding signs in wheat

Badger feeding signs in wheat

These feeding signs are accompanied by fresh dung, full of wheat.  In this case, there is quite an impressive amount.

Badger dung in wheat

Badger dung in wheat

The badgers use this field all year (I see their tracks), but the latrines only appear when they are feeding on the wheat.  Now, it could be that wheat has an effect on their digestion that makes latrines necessary, but my guess is that it is probably territorial.  The wheat fields are a major food resource, so it makes sense that each badger clan will try and claim it as their territory, marking it out with latrine sites.  When there is no food, there is no need to mark it, hence the latrines only occur when the wheat is ripe.  I must get round to some more of the latrine sites to see which ones contain wheat.  That would be interesting, to find out which badgers have been feeding here.

When I arrived, the local buzzard was flying from tree to tree, calling all the time.  I could see it through binoculars, perched high up on a branch.  I don’t know why buzzards call like this.  It is too late for mating, so perhaps it is a territorial display.

I tried to record the sound using the video function on my camera.  You can’t actually see the buzzard on the video, but turn the volume up and you should hear its cry.  It kept this noise up for over an hour!

At 8.30 a badger emerged briefly from the western sett entrance and then almost immediately went back underground.  Ten minutes later the cub did the same.  They seemed nervous.  It sounds strange, but badgers seem to be afraid of buzzards.  A buzzard would have no chance of carrying off even a half-grown badger, yet I’ve seen an entire family of badgers dive for cover when one passed overhead.

Five minutes later a badger came out and trotted off to the west, followed five minutes later by another, and then another and another, all at five minute intervals.  None of them stayed near the sett entrance.  This means that there were at least four badgers in this half of the sett.

Another ten minutes passed and badgers five and six emerged from the same hole.  As they did so, the badgers at the east end of the sett came out into a clearing, foraging, playing and, amusingly, trying to climb trees.  I counted five badgers in the group, which, plus the two at the west, gave a total of seven badgers visible at the same time.

One noteworthy behaviour was a fight that developed between two adult badgers.  Badgers will usually engage in some rough and tumble play or play-fighting, but this was more serious.  It ended with one badger running off, hotly pursued by the other.  I could hear their noises at least a hundred yards off; for them to go this far meant it was serious.  Perhaps this was an issue about dominance being acted out.

The other interesting event of the night was a fox that trotted past.  This must one of the cubs from earlier in the year.  I tried Pablo’s trick of calling in a fox by making a high-pitched squeaking noise (see here for a very impressive video), and blow me, it worked!  The fox changed direction and came trotting up to the base of my tree!

It obviously felt that something wasn’t right, but I was sitting very still and was well camouflaged.  So the fox did a very cunning thing – it walked round my tree in a big circle.

I’ve read about this behaviour but never seen it before.  It happens when an animal such as a fox is not sure about you, so they circle round to get downwind  so they can check you out.  Clever little fox!  Since I was in a tree and there was virtually no wind I must have passed the test, for the fox carried on wandering about.  It was too dark for pictures, but I watched through the binoculars.  The fox was young – its coat sleek and perfect, quite unlike the scruffy urban foxes we got in London.  I know that foxes aren’t everyone’s friend, and I know the damage they can do, but they’re still beautiful creatures when you see them in their element.

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Drunken Badgers

Posted in Background, tagged on July 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I’m getting a little worried about the decline in moral standards on this blog.  I seem to have become fixated on badger genitalia.  It’s only a matter of time before someone sends a letter to the Daily Mail – “My daughter was researching a school project on badgers and all she found was a video of badger testicles – why don’t the government ban this sick filth now?!”

So, in an attempt to raise the tone, here is a pair of amusing, educational and morally instructive stories sent in by readers about drunk badgers.

The first was found by Mungo:

A badger in Germany got so drunk on over-ripe cherries it staggered into the middle of a road and refused to budge.

A motorist called police near the central town of Goslar to report a dead badger on a road – only for officers to turn up and discover the animal alive and well, but drunk.

Police discovered the nocturnal beast had eaten cherries from a nearby tree which had turned to alcohol and given the badger diarrhoea.

Having failed to scare the animal away, officers eventually chased it from the road with a broom.

Oh, the mental images this conjours up!  The second story is a more personal experience from Josie:

A friend of mine runs a wildlife hospital and one night he received a call about an injured badger and fox lying in someones front garden, close to a road.

When he arrived he found the pair to be uninjured but blind drunk – both of them staggering around the place after gorging themselves on fermenting apples from a nearby orchard.

It was too unsafe to leave the drunk & disorderly pair so close to the road so they were gently guided into a cage with the aid of a walking stick.

By the time they arrived at the hospital the badger was snoring loudly.
The wildlife hospital provided them with bed and ‘breakfast’ and then they were released back on their home patch the following evening – after they had slept their hangovers off!

That was one little badger that had a brilliant “you will never guess what happened to me the other night” tale to tell his mates back at the sett!

Thanks for these, guys.  This is exactly what this blog was created for – sharing stories about drunk animals.  Now, if anyone has any video on this subject I’ll use it to really lower the tone…

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Fieldnotes: 11th July 2009 – The county show and a definitely male badger

Posted in Fieldnotes, tagged , on July 11, 2009| 3 Comments »

It’s been a busy week, what with my new job, rushing around buying new suits and train tickets, painting the house and making jam.  Nevertheless, I made time for some R&R today.

First on the agenda was the Bedfordshire County Show.  This is more of a country fair than a proper agricultural show – there were no competitions for best cow, parsnip, sheepdog etc – although they did have a rabbit show and an exhibition of dancing sheep (don’t ask!).  Like any country show it was a great day out, although I was a little disappointed that the ferret racing wasn’t on the schedule this year.

The Bedfordshire Natural History Society was very well represented, with a whole marquee of exhibits, including a fine display by the Badger Network.  I’m very impressed with the quality of the work the society does.  Many of the members are real experts in their fields and everyone is very happy to share their experience and knowledge.  I learnt a great deal, not only about badgers, but also about local birds, moths and how to identify bat species.

It was good to talk to them.  My hobby is considered eccentric (if not downright mad) by many people, so it is refreshing to meet like-minded folk.  They’re the sort of people that understand when you talk about your experiences of standing by the side of the road in the dead of night, photographing the reproductive organs of a dead badger.  Not many people can relate to that…

After spending time in the company of such enthusiasts, it was only natural that I went up to the wood in the evening.  Despite the black clouds and the threat of heavy rain it was pleasant enough.

Last week, it seemed as if the badgers had moved to the east end of the sett.  Today presented a different story.  Three badgers came out of one of the western entrances at about 8.20pm.  So, at least some of them are still in residence there.  I still don’t know what the badgers are doing, or what (if any) significance there is to their moving between the different parts of the sett.

I had spoken to members of the society about my difficulty in sexing badgers.  The advice they gave was ‘if you’re not sure, then it’s a female’.  The accuracy of this statement was revealed to me when one of the badgers started grooming.  In fact, that wasn’t the only thing that was revealed.  As the badger sat there with its legs in the air, it showed itself to be quite definitely male!

I shot a little bit of video.   The quality isn’t great due to the near darkness, but if you’ve ever wanted to see what a badger’s testicles look like then watch closely.  This is your chance!

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9th July 2009 – Fine Jam Abounds

Posted in Background on July 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We’re jamming
I wanna jam it with you,
We’re jamming, jamming
And I hope you like jamming too
(Bob Marley)


Making Raspberry Jam

Making Raspberry Jam

OK, this is another one of those diary posts.  Over the last week my wife and I have picked 2.6kg of blackcurrants.  After freezing some this left a nice, round 2kg for making jam.

I didn’t really understand jam until a couple of years ago when we started getting a surplus of fruit from the garden.  Rather than buying fruit at any time of the year from the supermarket, we now get more than we can possibly eat for a month and then nothing for the other 11 months of the year.  We need to find a way to preserve it.

Being interested in the idea of primitive living I like to use good, old fashioned methods.  I live in a Victorian farm workers’ cottage and I like to try to carry on the old ways as much as I can.  We’ve tried all sorts of ways of bottling, pickling and drying the produce from the garden.

Raspberry Jam 2Hence the jam.  Proper home-made blackcurrant jam is a real treat.  Unlike shop-bought jam that tastes of nothing but sugar and something vaguely synthetic, our jam has a really intense fruit flavour.  It tastes like the very essence of the fruit itself.  I love it.  Unknown to my wife I have a jar in the fridge and I eat a spoonful every now and then when I fancy something sweet.  It’s nicer than anything from the sweet shop.

Anyway, enough rambling.  I’ve made raspberry jam and blackcurrant jam, to say nothing of the cherries in syrup.  It’ll be time for the blackberries soon…

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Fieldnotes: 3rd July 2009 – Stalking badgers by moonlight

Posted in Fieldnotes, tagged , on July 4, 2009| 3 Comments »

Last night I went for a walk around 11.00pm to see if I could spot the badgers foraging in the pasture field, although if I’m honest with myself this was just an excuse to get outside.

There is something truly magical about being outdoors on a summer night.  It was a beautiful, clear, warm night with a nearly full moon – it was the perfect night to be out and about.  Few people, I suppose, deliberately go out in the dark these days, but they’re missing out.  Just to be out in the countryside on a night like this is special in a way that I simply cannot put into words.

By 11.30 I was sitting with my back to the great old stag-headed oak on the top of the hill in the pasture field.  It seemed that I could look out over the whole of Bedfordshire – the woods and fields, houses and roads – stretching out before me in the moonlight.  Once again the whole world was asleep while I was joyously awake and alive.

At 11.45 a badger came trotting up behind me.  Poor thing.  I was sitting facing the wood with the wind in my face because for some daft reason I expected the badgers to come out of the wood, even though they would have started foraging hours ago.  This badger must have been out in the field already, and it must have come across my scent being blown behind me and decided to hurry past.  Ah well, let it go.  No point in disturbing it further.

On my way back home I came almost face to face with another badger in the cornfield at the bottom of the hill.  I know they use this field and they feed here, but this was the first time I’ve caught one in the act.

I had my camera with me but I didn’t take any pictures.  Taking pictures would have meant using the camera flash.  To have suddenly lit up the scene with a harsh, artificial light seemed somehow crass and insensitive and sacrilegious, almost like shouting in a cathedral.  I was content to sit and watch and to be a part of the night myself, to share the night with the creatures around me.

Perhaps the magic of a summer night can only be experienced first hand, and not captured and brought home.

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Fieldnotes: 1st July 2009 – A pattern emerges

Posted in Fieldnotes, Video, tagged , , on July 2, 2009| 3 Comments »

Badger 3Yesterday was another beautiful warm evening.  7.45pm found me sitting contentedly up a tree at the main sett, drinking tea and making running repairs to my camouflage gloves with a needle and thread.  A more blissful domestic scene could not be imagined.

I’d taken a detour around the wood earlier in the evening to check out the badger day nests I found last month.  I’m curious to see whether the badgers are using them in this hot weather, particularly since the last time I was at the sett there were only two badgers to be seen.  Unfortunately the nests were all unoccupied and showed no signs of recent use, so there is another theory that will have to wait for another day to be proved.

At 8.35 a badger came trotting up from the inaccessible east end of the sett and disappeared into a hole at the west end.  Two more followed, and then another two.  In total, five badgers had come from the other part of the sett and gone straight back underground.

I waited for the badgers to re-appear, but nothing happened.  I would have thought they would be eager to start foraging, but they stayed underground.  Very odd.

As I was waiting another muntjac deer wandered onto the scene.  I’ve waited ages to get a good view of a muntjac, and now it’s happened twice in consecutive trips.  I’m getting a bit blasé now – the muntjac will have to start performing tricks if they want me to film them in the future!

After a little while I heard badger noises from the east end of the sett, whickering and the short, high-pitched bark that badgers make when play fighting has got out of hand.  Once again, this area is now an impenetrable mass of vegetation – elder, nettles and bracken.  The sounds were confirmed when three badgers came into view at the very far east side of the sett and started foraging through the wood.  These three plus the five I’d seen at the west end makes at least eight badgers, which is good.  I was worried because I’d only seen two last time.

A few minutes later a fox trotted past with a baby rabbit in its mouth, unfortunately too far away to photograph in the fading light.  I think it was the vixen that had the cubs here, but it could conceivably be one of the cubs themselves.  They’ve certainly grown up and left home now.  The fox loped off to the east end of the sett.  The fact that it was taking food there implies it has a den in the area.

The five badgers at the west end of the sett remained underground until 9.30 when I had decided to pack up and was in the process of climbing down the tree, at which point they emerged and gave me a hard stare.  Absolutely typical!

It was an interesting night for the variety of wildlife that was about, but it was also interesting because it showed a pattern.  Last year, the badgers started off in the west end of the sett and then moved to the east as the summer progressed.  This year they’ve done the same, although at least some badgers are using the west end for at least some of the time.

There is obviously something going on here.  Something makes the badgers move between parts of the sett.  If only I could recognise individual badgers I’d be in a better position to understand this, but despite staring at film and pictures they still look pretty much alike to me.  In the meantime I’ll keep making notes of what I see and hope it all makes more sense in the future.

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