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

Hmmm.  It seems I’ve been neglecting my badgers a bit lately.  Sorry about that.  Some sort of explanation is in order, I shouldn’t wonder.

I’ve been busy again.  A few weekends ago I went down to Avebury in Wiltshire for the solstice (it was rubbish – the National Trust closed all the car parks and effectively killed any celebrations).  The weekend after  that we had friends round (very nice) and I spent last weekend digging and levelling the foundations  of a play area for Scarlett (seemed to consist mostly of shovelling two tonnes of sand from one place to another), picking fruit and making jam (seedless raspberry, for Mrs BWM’s famous home-made jammie dodgers).  Add to that the usual demands of being a pater familias and holding down a responsible job as the Senior Consultant in a firm of business psychologists in the City of London, well, it’s been busy.

I managed to see one badger last week.  I had a late night at the HR Excellence Awards in London.  I didn’t win an award, but driving home at 1.00am I did have a badger cross the road in front of me, on a small lane about half a mile from my house.  I’ve seen paths on the roadside verges here, but this is the first time I’ve seen a badger on them.  Only a brief sighting, but it adds another detail to my badger map of the area.

Anyway, one quick glimpse of a badger doesn’t make me a badger watcher.  I made time on Sunday to get outside and see what the badgers were doing, without great results.  I still haven’t got to grips with the badgers at the Hawthorn Sett, so that was where I headed.

I arrived at 7.30pm and left at 9.30pm, but without so much as a peep of a badger.  My fieldcraft was sound.  I was joined by a rabbit that sat for half an hour between me and the sett.  Rabbits are, in my experience, more sensitive than badgers.  If the rabbit wasn’t disturbed by my presence then the badgers wouldn’t be either.  The sett is plainly in use – there are at least four active holes here.  But there were no badgers in evidence.

Perhaps this is an odd sett, where the badgers don’t play by the rules.  It is quite close to the road, so maybe they’ve adapted to disturbance by coming out late.  Who knows?

As a consolation I stopped to watch some deer on the way home.  The wheat is ripening in the fields, and the muntjac and chinese water deer are almost hidden, which means you can almost walk past without seeing them.  I really must get out more often.  Perhaps I’ll make time one of these evenings to see how the barn owls are doing, or maybe check out some of the new setts I’ve found.

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OK.  I’m back from holiday.  It’s been a warm evening, although a little windy, so I took a quick trip up to the main badger sett in the hope of seeing more badgers and hopefully some cubs.  I arrived a little late – 8.05pm – and luckily I sneaked into the area of the sett quietly because only 5 minutes later a pair of badgers emerged at the east end of the sett.  They snuffled and foraged around the sett and slowly wandered away.

I sat and watched for another 45 minutes but no other badgers emerged.  The sett looks active, with fresh spoil visible outside at least half a dozen holes, but I still haven’t seen evidence of more than three badgers this year.

Two years ago I sat at this sett and watched groups of up to ten badgers engaging in all sorts of social behaviour.  For the last couple of years though it’s been just a few individuals and much less social interaction.  And no cubs.  I’m not sure what has happened.

I write this blog mostly as a diary of my experiences so that I can keep track and look for patterns.  In this respect, it is just as valid to record only a few badgers (or even none at all) as it is to record a big group.  It may turn out to be more interesting in the long term.  But I have to say, on a personal level  it would be good to see some more badgers.  I enjoy being outdoors in the evening, but the badgers definitely make it special.  It would be very nice to come back one of these days and say “look everyone, here’s some pictures and video of a whole bunch of badgers!”

And here’s the dilemma.  Do I persist in watching at the main sett to see if I can figure out what’s happened?  Or do I swap and spend more of my time at another sett in the hope of seeing more (and more interesting) badger behaviour?  In an ideal world I’d do both, but my time is limited at the moment.  I must confess, I’m getting tempted to move my attentions to another sett for a little while.  I think I’ll learn more that way, as well as it being more enjoyable.

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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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Hurry up daddy!

There is a weekend in our village that marks the proper start of spring.  It doesn’t have a formal date and it isn’t written on any calendar or in any diary.  It’s the weekend when all the inhabitants start to emerge and life begins again.  During the winter it’s dark and it’s cold.  If you meet people it’s usually only fleeting as you hurry by.  But this weekend we’ve all been out – mowing lawns, digging gardens, walking to the park or just chatting over the fence.  The daffodils are out, the primroses are in flower and the blossom is thick on the blackthorn, but this awakening in the village means that spring is truly here.

I’ve been looking after Scarlett today so there was no badger watching, but the beautiful weather (and the longer evening now the clocks have gone forward) was too good to waste.  It was out with the backpack baby carrier and off to the woods.

I did have a proper aim for this.  I’m still trying to locate the badger setts that neighbour the main one I watch.  But it wasn’t all serious.  It’s the first day for months that was warm enough to spend some time outside, so I packed a picnic for Scarlett’s tea so that we could have a little adventure without having to dash back home.

And an adventure is what we had.  I walked almost to the next village and back, up hills and down dales, and let me tell you – well-designed though the backpack carrier is – it gets a bit heavy after a few miles.

Spoil heap and path - classic signs of an active badger sett

Did I find any badgers?  Yes and no.  The badgers at the main sett seem to be doing well, with more holes active than the last time I checked.  The spoil heaps outside the holes told their own stories.  Some were fresh soil, meaning that they were new excavations.  Some were soil mixed with the remains of leaves and grass.  This showed that the badgers were clearing out old holes, complete with the remnants of bedding.  Let’s hope there are cubs this year.

As to other setts, I didn’t find any.  I found loads of badger sign – dung pits, hundreds of tracks and even paths, but I couldn’t seem to find their focus.  I’ll need to sit and look at the map for a while and plot everything.  It’s good to know there are plenty of badgers out there, but slightly frustrating that I couldn’t locate the sett.

Only slightly frustrating.  I had a great walk.  Scarlett loved to see the lambs playing in the fields, and we had a jolly nice picnic sitting in the woods.  You know, I think it was a perfect way to spend the afternoon.

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