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Thoughts Inspired by a Sparrowhawk

October 20, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

Autumn dawn

Autumn dawn

A couple of days ago I saw my first Sparrowhawk.  I’ve been looking out for Sparrowhawks for a while now.  I know they’re found in my area, and I know the habitat around our village is perfect for them.  I’ve got friends who regard them almost as pests as they prey on the birds attracted to their bird tables.  I’m not a twitcher by any means – I don’t have list of birds to tick off – but I’ve got a thing about birds of prey and I’ve wanted to see a sparrowhawk.

The irony is, that after countless hours spent in the fields and woods, I saw my first Sparrowhawk sitting on the top of a lamppost on the outskirts of our local town, Bletchley.

In a way it was a little disappointing, but it’s got me thinking about urban wildlife in general and how resilient nature is.  After all, many species are adapting and living alongside man. When I lived in London I had dozens of urban foxes in my garden, but here in the country I’ve only seen a handful.  There are urban badgers in some places, and even reports of urban otters.  And what about the pigeons?  How many people have seen a proper wild Rock Dove, compared to the millions who see urban pigeons every day?  Not to mention the colonies of wild budgies living in South London.

I suppose it is all rather encouraging.  Although the urban landscape is spreading, the wildlife is adapting.  Sure, there are probably as many losers as winners, but it is adapting nonetheless.  The first Red Kite I ever saw was on a bleak mountain in a spectacularly remote part of Wales, four or five hours walk from the nearest road or house.  The last Red Kite I saw was over a dual carriageway off the Oxford ring road.  Perhaps you can’t compare the two experiences, but I’m glad to see the Red Kites flourishing in all areas.

Hopefully I’ll now see more Sparrowhawks, in more aesthetically pleasing surroundings.  I’ve noticed that once you’ve seen one example of a particular bird, or animal, or plant, you tend to see more.  Take Buzzards for example.  When we moved to the village I was convinced that it was the right environment for Buzzards.  I spent hours staring distractedly at the sky hoping to see one, yet it took me two years before I finally got my first sighting.  Now, of course, I see and hear them all the time.  I can take you to four or five spots that each have their own local Buzzard, all within walking distance of my house.

Did my village suddenly get overrun with Buzzards two years ago?  Of course not.  I think what happened was that I became more tuned in to the Buzzards.  Once my ‘Buzzard-sense’ had developed it allowed me to see them much more easily.  The same thing is happening now as I learn to track mammals.  I am seeing vole runs and badger latrines that I must have walked past a hundred times without realising, but now I’m tuned in they stand out clearly.

If there is a meaning to this story, I guess it’s that you should be aware of your local environment.  It’s fine to dash around to new places looking for new wildlife, but spending time getting tuned in pays dividends in the long run.

Here’s to more Sparrowhawks, whether they be urban or rural!

Posted in That's not a badger!, Thoughts and Musings | Tagged , | 8 Comments »

Fieldnotes: 12th October 2008 – The Red Deer Rut

October 19, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

Things have been busy at work and home lately, and with the nights drawing in it has meant that I’ve had less time for wildlife.  Nevertheless, there was one spectacle I had no intention of missing, and that was the Red Deer rut.

Red Deer Stag

Red Deer Stag

Last Sunday I took a trip to Woburn Abbey, our nearest deer park.  You may think it’s cheating, watching the deer in a park instead of in the wild, but as an experience it was hard to beat.

The good thing about the deer park at Woburn is that it is criss-crossed by public footpaths.  If the Duke of Bedford should ever read this, I’d like to say thanks for this generous and far-sighted move.  It means that you can get close to the deer and also walk through the park in the afternoon when it is quiet.  Whilst the deer are by no means tame, they are habituated to people to a degree, so they are not as shy as their wild cousins.

This was the first time I’d spent any length of time in the park during the rut (I’ve been trail running through it during the rut before, but that’s a different story) and the experience was absolutely fantastic.  I deliberately went in the late afternoon, so I had the park pretty much to myself.  Even as I walked up to the gates I could hear the Red Deer stags bellowing.  The stags had spaced themselves out around the park and were calling to attract mates and challenge other stags.

Red Deer stags are truly impressive beasts.  With a full set of antlers, and charged up on testosterone, they seem even bigger than they really are.  The still evening air was full of bellows and grunts, giving an unreal and almost prehistoric feel to the situation.  They may have been park deer, but this evening they were as wild as any others.

Fallow stag at Woburn

Fallow stag at Woburn

I stuck firmly to the paths and gave the stags as wide a berth as possible.  My second-worst fear was that they would somehow mistake me for another male deer and take offence.  I was carrying a walking stick, but I doubt it would help in a fight, and I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of those antlers.  I’ve seen the stags when they clash antlers, and it’s incredibly fast and ferocious.

My very worst fear was that they would somehow mistake me for a female deer…

In all, I spent a couple of hours in the park.  Like I said, it was an incredible experience, and I’d whole-heartedly recommend a trip to Woburn for anyone.  Make the effort and get out of your car and you’ll be amply rewarded.  I’ll certainly be a regular visitor over the winter months.

Chinese Water Deer

Chinese Water Deer

In passing, Woburn is the home to many other species of deer, including the odd-looking Pere David’s Deer, now extinct in their native China.  Another deer from that part of the world is the Chinese Water Deer.  I mentioned these a couple of posts ago.  Like the Muntjac they were originally brought to Britain by the Duke of Bedford and subsequently escaped and bred in the wild.  To make up for not getting a photo of a wild one, here’s one from the park.  Note the large canine teeth.  Even so, these little deer are much cuter (and far less intimidating) than rutting Red Deer.

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The Grim Tithe

October 4, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

Newborough Forest, Anglesey

Newborough Forest, Anglesey

As I write this it’s blowing a gale outside, with squalls of cold rain gusting about.  I was supposed to be harvesting the last of my potatoes today, but I’ve retreated in the face of the weather and the hope that tomorrow will be better.

It is odd to think that two weeks ago I was sitting on a beach basking in the sunshine, and even more remarkable when that beach was in North Wales.  It was a very pleasant holiday – lots of fishing, walking and generally taking things easy.

The elusive red squirrels, alas, eluded me.  I spent a couple of days walking around Newborough forest, and though there was plenty of sign in the form of gnawed pine cones, the squirrels themselves were nowhere to be seen.  Still, it gives me an excuse to go back there.

Back home, there’s sad news for me.  A badger was killed this week on the main road, about a quarter of a mile from my house.  This is not one of ‘my’ badgers, or at least it isn’t from the sett that I watch – that’s on the other side of the village.  It is however in the area where I take my regular tracking walks, and may even be the badger that I’ve tracked in the field behind my house.

Road accidents account for a large proportion of badger deaths; they are possibly the biggest cause of death.  Every year there is a grim toll of casualties.  Unfortunately, badgers seem to have little road sense.  I’ve twice had badgers run across the road in front of my car, and both times they’ve dashed across without even seeming to look.

Since I moved here five years ago I’ve seen three dead badgers by the side of the roads in this area.  The accidents all seem to occur at this time of year.  I think that as the nights get longer, the badger’s routines come into conflict with those of humans.  During the summer, it gets light before anyone is up and about, so the badgers are safely home before the morning traffic starts.  Now the mornings are getting darker their paths are more likely to cross ours, with tragic results.

I took a walk down the road to have a look.  I get particularly annoyed when I walk along road verges, as they always seem to be littered with crisp packets, fast food wrappers and plastic bottles thrown away by the ignorant and vulgar motorists.  I can’t understand what makes people drive through the countryside tossing out crap from their car windows.  If I could only catch them in the act I’d learn them a lesson, believe me.

A sad end

A sad end

The dead badger was on the verge.  It is a sad end for such a creature, but then I can’t really blame anyone.  I drive a car and I drive down this road, so it could well have been me.  There was a badger path a little way off, so it seems like the badger was returning home after foraging when the accident happened.

I walked home along the route I use on my regular tracking walks, hoping to see fresh badger tracks that would prove that it wasn’t the badger I have been tracking lying there.  Unfortunately the wind and the rain had polished the sandy ground smooth, so there were no tracks at all to be seen.  I’ll have a look tomorrow, weather permitting, and see if any animals have been down there overnight.

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I’m off on holiday!

September 15, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

No more badgers, deer or tracks for me for a couple of weeks.  I’m off on holiday to the ancient rocky druid shore of Anglesey.

H.E. Forrest, in 1907, wrote that badgers were not indigenous to Anglesey, although he knew of one sett, the badgers having apparently walked over the Menai Bridge.  Even so, there’ll be plenty to keep me occupied, from seals to adders, choughs to ravens.  I was lucky enough to see a minke whale from the shore here a couple of years ago, and I’ve love to repeat that sighting.

Who knows, if I find time on my hands I may even see if I can get close to some of the red squirrels in the woods at the southwest of the island…

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Fieldnotes: 7th September 2008 – Autumn is a-coming in

September 7, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

It is definitely autumn.  It hasn’t felt like we’ve had much of a summer this year, but the seasons are definitely turning.  The blackberries are in full flow, the leaves are starting to turn on the horse chestnut trees (always the first to get leaves and the first to lose them) and the evenings are drawing in.

Sadly, the badger watching season is coming to an end for me.  Badgers don’t hibernate, so they’ll be out and about all winter, but it is now pretty well dark when they emerge from the sett.  Fine for the badgers, not so fine for badger watching.  I may try and see if I can watch them using an artificial light – red light is not supposed to bother them very much – but I’m always wary of disturbing them.

Today I’ve been for a wander around the woods and fields.  All the summer crops have now been harvested, so everything is looking a bit bare.  No doubt the badgers are hard at work getting in their harvest, eating as much as they can and putting on as much weight as possible for the leaner months ahead.

Badger dung with elderberries

Badger dung with elderberries

The badger dung in one of the latrine sites was dark red and a mass of pips, a sign that at least one badger has been gorging itself on elderberries.  Apparently elderberries are edible for humans, but I’ve tried them and they aren’t very nice.  I’m happy to leave them to the badgers.

I visited the far end of the wood today in search of the neighboring badger setts that I am sure are there, based on my mapping of latrine sites and territories.  Sure enough, about 700m from the main sett I came across what looks very like a badger hole.  This fits in very nicely with my estimate of 350m for the radius of a badger territory.

Unfortunately the rain had washed out any tracks from the vicinity, but the hole looked badger-ish to me.  There were old dung pits nearby, and some fairly well-used paths.  Of course, the only proof would be to go there one evening and see if a badger comes out of it.

The interesting thing is that this is a single hole, compared to the dozen or so holes at the main sett.  There has been a fair amount written about subsidiary setts – setts connected by kinship to a main sett, so I wonder if this is an example.  To be honest, I’ve always found the literature on main, outlying and subsidiary setts a trifle confusing, but I’ve got a reason to go back and re-read it now.  I’ll also try and get down here one evening and see what happens.

The new badger sett

The new badger sett - note the spoil heap and paths

As I was sitting contemplating this new sett, a Chinese Water Deer wandered up.  These are small deer, about the size of a muntjac, but more graceful.  Their most distinctive feature is that they have two long ‘fangs’ or tusks on the upper jaw, which gives them a strange, vampire deer appearance.  My camouflage jacket was obviously working today because this one wandered to within about 15 feet of me.  Chinese Water Deer are less common than the other species around here.  Like so many unusual species they were introduced by the Duke of Bedford in Woburn and subsequently escaped.  Now it’s estimated that the UK has something like 10% of the total world population, so they have obviously become scarce in their native country.

Elsewhere, I’m still practising my tracking.  The field behind my house is great, as the sandy soil is always full of the tracks of rabbit, muntjac and roe deer.  This evening I came across what looked very much like badger tracks.  This in itself is not unusual, but they must have been made this afternoon, as the heavy rain this morning washed out all last night’s tracks.

I'd swear this is the forefoot of a badger - look at the claws - but from the freshness it was made this afternoon

Looks like the forepaw of a badger to me!

Does this mean that my local badger has taken to wandering around in the daytime, or have I misidentified the tracks?  There’s still more work for me to do on my tracking.  If nothing else, it’ll keep me occupied over the winter.

Posted in Fieldnotes, Tracking | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

Another stoat track

August 26, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

Just to follow on from the last post, here’s another of the tracks I believe were made by a stoat.

I'm pretty sure it's a stoat track. Scale in cm.

I'm pretty sure it's a stoat. Scale in cm.

This one was obviously made when the mud was very soft or even under water, as it lacks details of the claws etc. The shape, particularly of the rear pad, is very similar to the stoat tracks in the guidebooks. Of course, if anyone knows more, feel free to leave a comment.

Watch this space. I’ll see if I can get more after the next spell of wet weather. Shouldn’t have to wait too long…!

Posted in That's not a badger!, Tracking | Tagged , , | 3 Comments »

Fieldnotes: 25th August 2008 – Tracking

August 25, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

As an antidote to my increasingly desparate attempts to watch badgers, I’ve spent the afternoon having a gentle stroll around the area, tracking wildlife and picking blackberries.

Roe Deer track

Roe Deer track

I’m really getting into tracking at the moment. As well as being a fascinating activity in it’s own right, it offers a window into the movements of all sorts of wildlife. I’m still very much a beginner at tracking, but I’m finding it very rewarding. Tracking, I suppose, is a bit like reading. I’m at the stage where I can recognise individual tracks, or words, and I’m just starting to put them together into full sentences. A lot of the skill in tracking comes from looking, really looking, at the little details, and when you start to notice these, the picture starts to come into focus. A walk in the country becomes almost like reading a book of what the animals have been up to.

Let me give you an example. I’ve been able to recognise badger tracks for years, but it’s only in the last couple of weeks that I realised that a badger regularly uses the path down the field behind my house. It walks down the path at the start of the night, and walks back up the path some time later on. It’s an adult badger, and it doesn’t run, it walks at a normal badger pace. I’ve never seen this badger, but I’ve tracked it enough times to know its routine.

Assorted tracks in the mud

Assorted tracks in the mud

The soil in the fields behind my house varies from clay at the bottom of the hill to pure sand at the top, so it’s an excellent place to learn about tracking. The clay soil dries hard, so the animals leave very little trace, but where it is damp it gives very clear prints. Today was dry, but there were pools of mud in the ruts left by a tractor. I spent a happy twenty minutes sitting looking at these.

It may seem like just a patch of mud, but if you spend time really looking, there is a story there waiting to be told – a time capsule of the comings and goings of the wildlife over the last 24 hours. In this one little patch there were the tracks of two Roe deer, several muntjac, a fox, and what I think is a stoat.

Readers of the blog may be aware of my long-standing desire to watch stoats in this area, and my utter lack of success in doing so. One of the reasons that I am so interested in tracking is because it may help me to get closer to these elusive animals, help me to understand the habits better and ultimately to allow me to watch them going about their business.

Like I say, I’m still a beginner. There are lots of unawswered questions still. Where did the stoat go after hopping through the mud? Where does the badger come from before walking down the field? The more I learn, the more I’ll be able to answer these. In the meantime though, tracking makes a walk in the country much more enjoyable, and as the evenings start to close in and it gets too dark for badger watching, I’ll have a new excuse to wander about the field and hedgerows at the weekends.

Possible stoat track

Possible stoat track

For anyone interested in tracking (and I’d recommend it as a pastime to everyone who is interested in wildlife) have a look at Pablo’s tracking pages here. This is what got me started on the whole thing.

I spent a happy couple of hours strolling about, looking at tracks, watching the buzzards soaring overhead and picking blackberries. The blackberries seem very prolific this year, and in a couple of hours yesterday and today I’ve picked about three kilos – enough for another serious jam-making session.

A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon stroll. I just goes to show what there is to be discovered outdoors if you’re willing to go and look for it.

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Fieldnotes: 23rd August 2008 – Tree-hugger!

August 24, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

I’ve spent the evening hugging a tree. And no, it wasn’t a joyful spiritual experience.

The central sett area - note the badger paths and undergrowth

The central sett area - note the badger paths and undergrowth

As I mentioned in the last post, the badgers have taken up residence in the overgrown craters at the centre of the site, which means that they are practically invisible from anywhere on the outside.

In order to get a good view of them, I spent the evening up a tree on the edge of this overgrown central area. This tree is next to one of the main badger paths, and gives just enough elevation so that you can look over into the craters.

The downside is that this tree only has one side branch from the trunk, about six feet off the ground and facing away from the sett. This side branch grows up at a narrow angle to the trunk. It is dead, so I only trust it to support my weight at the point where it joins the trunk. Sitting down on it is out of the question, so the only possible position is stand on one leg on the branch. After some experimentation, I found that the most secure and comfortable stance was to reach my arms around the trunk and literally hug the tree.

The advantage of this tree was that I was much closer to the sett than usual. I felt like a soldier in enemy territory. For a long time I’ve looked at this patch of ground from a distance, and now I was right here in the middle of it.

The disadvantage was that it was excruciatingly uncomfortable. Having all my weight on one foot wedged into a narrow branch became surprisingly painful after only about ten minutes. I found that by hugging the tree tightly and going through some sort of slow motion hopping manoeuvre I could change legs and ease the pressure a little, but since I was very close to the sett I couldn’t afford to move too much.

The tree did help me to stay out of sight. Even the local rabbit hopped underneath without suspicion.

One of the local rabbits

One of the local rabbits

At 7.50pm I heard the unmistakable whickering of badgers from the deep undergrowth. This was repeated again shortly afterwards.

It meant two things. Firstly, that the badgers were above ground, and engaged in some relaxed and happy play fighting. Secondly, that they were on the other side of the foliage to me.

By 8.15 the light was failing. No badgers had appeared on my side of the sett. I decided to call it a night, and stiffly and gracelessly I slid down the tree on my cramped legs. The badgers carried on yipping and whickering. With their mocking laughter ringing in my ears I slunk off home.

Curse these stripey devils yet again…!

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Fieldnotes: 22nd August 2008 – Dude, where’s my badger?

August 23, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

Once again I’ve been neglecting my badgers. Or leaving them in peace, depending on your perspective.

Badger print

Badger print

I actually had a little trip up to the wood last weekend, but although I could hear the badgers, I couldn’t see them. Let me explain. The sett itself is on a small rise in the ground There is a small valley to the north of the sett, with parallel gullies running into it on the east and west of the sett. This means that if you are in the low ground on one side you can only see that side of the sett, as the rise in the ground makes it impossible to see the other side.

The badgers have moved to a part of the sett in the centre of this rise, which, to make matters more difficult, resembles an overgrown first world war battlefield. There are big craters dotted around, no doubt the result of spoil heaps and cave-ins at the sett many generations of badgers ago. This local geography is making the badgers very difficult to watch, so it was not a great surprise that I could hear the whickering noises of badgers at play, but to my frustration they were invisible on the other side of the sett.

This evening everything seemed right for badger watching. It was a Friday evening, my wife was working late, and for once it wasn’t raining. There was a nice breeze blowing in from the west, which meant that I could sit in one of the easily climbed trees on the edge of the sett.

And sure enough, I did see the badgers. The first pair, an adult and a cub, came out of the tangle of undergrowth in the middle of the site at about 8.10pm and sat around the central sett entrance. At about 8.30pm I could see movement in the undergrowth, and through binoculars I could see four or five badgers rolling about, grooming and fighting. With the two that had come out earlier, this made a total of six or seven out at the same time.

I couldn’t make out much detail through the foliage, but the badgers seemed happy and healthy enough. The light had gone too much for any photographs. The long exposure required in dim light means that the badgers are inevitably blurred – they rarely sit still long enough.

By 8.45pm they had moved out into the open, but it was getting too dark to really see what was happening. I use 7×50 binoculars, and they are very good at collecting the available light so that things seem brighter than they with the naked eye, but even so I was struggling to see.

This evening won’t go down as one of the best badger watching sessions ever, but it was nice to get out to the cool freshness of the wood, and good to see that the badgers were still going strong.

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Fieldnotes: 9th August 2008 – Nice weather for frogs

August 9, 2008 by Badger Watching Man

What madness is this?

The frog by the path, happy in the rain

The frog by the path, happy in the rain

It’s been raining all day. It’s raining now. I’m sitting on a rotten log underneath a tall oak tree, and everything is wet.

There’s only one dry space in the entire wood, and that’s the three inches under the brim of my hat. I’m sharing this dry space with what seems like every mosquito and bug for miles around, but for once, thrown together by a common need for shelter, they don’t seem to be biting me.

It is 7.30 in the evening and I’m watching at the eastern sett entrance. There’s no sign of the badgers, but then I hardly expected there to be. All my experience tells me that they’ll be snug underground. There’ll be no playing tonight – just a quick exit and then off to feed. Badgers dislike the rain as much as I do. Some foolish instinct has drawn me up here, but I don’t hold out high hopes.

A rabbit hops by about 30 feet away. It shakes itself like a dog and disappears for a moment in a fine spray of water droplets. Even the rabbit is soaking.

The rabbit and I play a quick game of Who Can Stay Still The Longest. To be honest, this is not a very exciting game, and it probably won’t make it onto television any time soon, but it passes the time.

The rules are simple. The rabbit looks at me. I look at the rabbit. The first one to move loses. If I move first, the rabbit confirms its suspicion that I’m a threat, and it hops away. If the rabbit moves first, it means that my camouflage is working and I get the chance to watch the rabbit’s natural behaviour. I’ve played this game many times, and the rabbits always take it very seriously. Winning or losing can literally be a matter of life and death for them in this game.

This time I win, and the rabbit hops a few yards closer to me and sits under a tree. It’s easier for me today because any movement of my head sends a trickle of water into my lap, so I’ve got a real interest in staying still. The trick of the game is to avoid looking directly at the rabbit. Rabbits, like most prey animals, seem to have a paranoid sixth sense that tells them when they’re being watched. If you focus your eyes on the ground and watch them out of the corner of your eye they seem to be more relaxed.

At 7.50 the little badger cub appears. It trots quickly by me and into the foliage on the east. The little cub always seems to be doing its own thing, and this evening is no exception. I don’t think it’s hurrying because of me; it just doesn’t want to hang around in the rain.

By 8.30 it is getting dark, and no more badgers have appeared. I’m cold and I’m wet. My waterproof jacket has done a great job, but the water is coming in down my neck and up my sleeves, and for once I decide that sitting at home with a nice hot cup of tea is the perfect way to spend the evening. I know that my last few badger watching sessions have not been a success, but on the other hand I don’t want to be remembered as the man who came down with hypothermia on an August evening in the south of England. I’ll return soon and get back to some proper badger watching.

As I leave I come across a frog on the path. He’s the only creature who seems genuinely happy with the weather at the moment. Nice weather for frogs indeed!

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