Tales from the Wood – The Diary of a Badger Watching Man

The fine weather is continuing and it really feels like early summer now.  Everything is lush and growing in the warmth.  Tomorrow is May Day – Beltane in the old celtic calendar – which marks the start of summer.  The celtic fire festivals neatly divide up the year.  Beltane is the beginning of summer, Samhain on November 1st is the beginning of winter. It means we’ve got six whole months of summer ahead of us after today.

Which is good, because I seem to have lost my badger mojo lately. I paid a visit to the Hawthorn sett this evening.  Last time, you’ll remember, I only managed to see half a badger here.  This time was even less impressive.  I didn’t see any parts of a badger at all.

My badger watching aims at the moment are quite simple:

1. to get a reasonably accurate estimate of badger numbers at the main sett, the Pine Tree sett and the Hawthorn sett  so I can track this in the future,
2. to locate the active sett in the vicinity of the Beech Tree sett and monitor that too,
3. to see this year’s cubs at one or more setts, for no other reason than they’re cute and fun to watch.

Now, I’m not some sort of ultra-hardcore badger watcher.  The main reason I do it is to spend time outside, enjoying the countryside – listening to the owls, smelling the scents of a wood at night, that sort of thing – it’s a way to relax.  But I do like to follow some sort of plan, and right now I don’t think I’m making much progress.

Some of this is to be expected.  After all, the Hawthorn sett is new for me, so I may need some time to learn the habits of its residents.  And I don’t have as much time as I’ve had in previous years.  But I’m starting to suspect that the badgers are playing tricks on me this year…

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Today is the day of the royal wedding – Prince William and Kate Middleton tied the knot.   I like Prince William.  Not only does he live on Anglesey (a place I know well) but everyone got a day off work for his wedding.  There’s been street parties and flag waving all over the country.  Bread and circuses?  Yup – that’ll do for me.  I’m happy with that.

We had a party in the village.  Everyone brought food and drink to the village hall (including some home-made cider) and the whole village had a slap-up feast followed by games on the green – five-legged races, welly-throwing, tug-of-war and so on.  It was a great day that showed just how eccentrically the British can celebrate when they want to.

In the evening I took advantage of the day off work and the fine weather and walked up to the wood.  I want to get an idea of the number of badgers at the sett.  Hopefully there’ll be cubs soon too.  As it happened, I only saw one badger so I’m no wiser about the total number.  This badger emerged at 8.15 and snuffled around the leaf litter contentedly for the next 20 minutes or so before wandering off deeper into the wood.  There was just enough light for a photo (only just).  It was a normal, healthy badger foraging for food, but it was on its own.

I’ll keep watching.  Sooner or later the badgers will reveal their secrets…

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The bluebells are out early this year.  We went for a walk as a family this weekend to go and see them.  They’re not fully out in the wood yet, but they’re definitely there.  The picture of the bluebells at the top of this page was taken a few years ago in mid-May, which means this year is very early.  I read somewhere that this is due to the warm weather we’ve had lately, but I always thought flowering was controlled by the duration of daylight (or more properly, the decreased duration of darkness).  Perhaps the days have been lighter as well as warmer?

Anyhow, this post isn’t really about bluebells, pretty though they are.  It’s to record my first badger watching visit to the Hawthorn sett.  I’d love to say that it went like a dream and I spent a lovely evening in the company of badgers as they cavorted and frolicked in front of me, but that would be too easy.

In fact, these badgers proved to be just as awkward as any others I’ve watched.  They didn’t seem interested in a grand debut performance.  I settled in to watch at about 7.40pm.  Nothing happened.  This wasn’t a problem – I can’t expect the badgers to come out at the same time as the others.

At 8.26 I heard the sound of scratching from behind a bramble patch.  Definitely a badger, but one that had come out from one of the few holes not visible from my spot.  At 8.30 I caught my first glimpse of a badger at this new sett – just its head peeping out over the undergrowth.  And that was all, until the light faded.  A single badger scratching contentedly.

The sett is big and active, so there must be more badgers in residence.  Hopefully next time I’ll be able to make a better count.

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I’ve spent the day shifting manure for the vegetable patch and buying hedging plants, so it’s been a real outdoors day.  But even better than that, I’ve been out on my first proper badger watching trip of the year.  The evenings are now light enough to get a chance of seeing badgers before it gets too dark.

By 7.50pm the sun had set and I was sitting in my favourite tree.  To be honest, I’m a little rusty.  I haven’t done this for a while.  I moved to quickly in the wood.  I was clumsy and noisy.  I put up a small herd of fallow deer and a couple of muntjac on my way in.  But hey, this is all part of the experience.  It always takes a little while to get back into practice, to really tune in and learn to move at the slow pace of the wood, not the frantic city pace that I’ve grown accustomed to.

At 8.10 I could hear the unmistakable sound of a badger gathering bedding on the other side of the sett.  A few minutes later a badger trotted into view.  You know, this will be the fifth year that I’ve been watching badgers, and I still get a thrill when I see a stripey face in the twilight.  The badger snuffled this way and that as it foraged in the dried leaves.

It was now too dark to see with the naked eye, but the badger was visible through binoculars.  Binoculars are the poor man’s night vision.  A good set of binoculars with a large objective lens will act as funnel, collecting and concentrating the available light.

Another few minutes later, a pair of badgers emerged from a hole in the middle of the sett and sat for a while grooming contentedly.  As the light faded completely a pair of muntjacs began barking incessantly and it was time for me to go.

So far, so good.  There are at least three badgers in the sett and they seem healthy and happy.  I was a bit worried last year when they didn’t seem to be thriving, but there are plenty of signs of activity at the moment.  Let’s hope they have a better year this year.

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