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

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.

On the one hand, there are signs that spring is peeping through.  The snowdrops have been up for a couple of weeks and the daffodils are starting to show.  The woods are thick with the first bluebell shoots and the catkins are out on the hazels.  On the other hand, the weather is still distinctly wintry.  Saturday’s heavy rain gave way to a fine misty drizzle today.  It’s been a dark, cold and gloomy day.

I spent some time this morning starting to tidy up the vegetable garden, beginning the transformation from soggy, chicken-ravaged wilderness to productive veg patch.  Speaking of chickens, I clipped their wings today to try to put an end to a recent spate of escapes (the ungrateful little minxes have everything they want – loads of space, a whole vegetable garden to scratch in and a lovely coop, and they still persist in escaping) and – avert your eyes, gentle reader – I set traps for the rats.  Where there are chickens, there are rats.  They live in my compost bins and flourish and grow fat on the leftover chicken feed.  Despite my recent chivalry towards the rat that the cat brought in, I need to control their numbers.  Let’s not be squeamish about it.

In the afternoon I was on parenting duty, so it was on with the backpack baby carrier and off to the wood.  I thought I’d follow my own advice about this being a good time of year for sett surveys and see what else was happening.  We walked to the far end of the wood, through the dark, mist-dripping trees, to the Beech Tree sett.  This was much easier to see without the summer bracken, but to my disappointment there were no signs of recent use.  There were no signs of disturbance (i.e. it had not been dug out or blocked), but it did not look at all badgery.  The footpaths in the wood showed clear badger tracks, the badger paths looked well-used (although they are also used by deer, so this isn’t a definite sign) and I was even able to track a badger through the muddy pasture on the far side of the wood and up a farm track.  But the Beech Tree sett itself was apparently unused.

I’m beginning to doubt myself now.  I’ve only ever watched this sett a couple of times, and I’ve never actually seen a badger come out.  Perhaps it isn’t a badger sett at all?  Perhaps it’s been unused for a while?  If it isn’t an active sett then there must be one close by that is.  There’s far too much evidence of badger activity for there not to be, and the location is right for my territory map.

As ever, the badgers have got me confused.  I think I need to take a few more walks up to the wood before the summer to see if I can either see some activity at the Beech Tree or track down another sett.

The backpack baby carrier

It’s been a while since I last had a look at the main badger sett in the wood so it was overdue a visit.  I like to go to the sett at this time of year – the lack of undergrowth makes it easy to see the layout of the site (not easy in summer when there’s waist-high nettles), and the number of active holes gives you an idea of the prosperity of the clan.  The badgers should be giving birth to cubs now; extra active holes is a sign that the females have set up separate ‘maternity’ holes safely away from the rest of the group.

The badgers seem to have declined sharply in numbers at this sett, from 12 or so a couple of years ago down to maybe just  four last year.  I was keen to check that they were OK.  There was no chance of seeing badgers in the middle of the day, but hopefully the activity at the sett would give me an idea.

Getting up to the wood presented a bit of a challenge.  Mrs BWM has been away for the weekend for work, so that means if I was going to go to the wood, then Scarlett was going to come with me.  The all-terrain baby buggy is good, but I didn’t fancy lugging it over fallen trees in the wood.  Besides, it’s been raining a lot this week and the fields around here resemble a Flanders battlefield in 1917.  It was time to try out a new piece of kit – a backpack baby carrier that a friend had kindly given us.  It was surprisingly comfortable to carry – I’m used to carrying a big rucksack after years of backpacking – and Scarlett enjoyed peering out over my shoulder.  All in all it proved a very effective way of covering rough ground.

Badger tracks in mud - note the heel pad, which rarely shows up on firmer ground

The mud was deep and claggy but it showed up tracks beautifully.  The badgers had been out in force, with badger tracks literally covering the ground at the entrance to the wood.  So far so good – the badgers are there and they’re active.

The sett itself showed similarly encouraging signs.  The badger paths were all well-trodden and the dung pits were well-used.  Six of the sett entrances showed significant signs of use, both tracks and spoil from recent excavation.  Interestingly, I did a similar survey almost exactly a year ago, and different holes were active then than are active now.  Most of the active holes were at the east end of the sett, with only the main hole at the west end showing signs of use.  This is not necessarily anything to be concerned about.  I’m getting used to the idea that badgers move regularly between holes at the sett, even though I still don’t know why they do it or what determines which holes they use.  I have an idea that it is related to clan relationships and hierarchy, but I’m a long way off proving it or even providing a working hypothesis.  One day the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place.

Active badger hole - fresh spoil and no dead leaves

Overall, it was a useful visit.  The badgers seem to be active and there were no signs of disturbance or visible casualties.  I’ll try to get a nocturnal session up here soon and see if I can’t observe the badgers themselves.

I commute into work on the train so I drive to the station each morning.   Instead of driving the quick way on the main roads I get up a little earlier and drive a longer route along the country lanes.  I like this – there’s always a chance of coming across the local wildlife on the quieter roads and in the woods and I feel that I get out into the proper countryside every day, even on workdays.  On most journeys I’ll see something – a muntjac, a chinese water deer or a hare.

But this morning, after a year and a half of driving this route, I added a new species to the list.  As I drove up the lane about a mile from home, there was a badger, trotting along happily at the side of the road.  This was at 6.30 this morning, so it was late for a badger to be out foraging, but it had been a mild, damp night so it was perfect conditions for catching worms.  Maybe it stayed out to make the most of it.

I’ve never seen a badger around here before, but it was next to a large patch of (unfortunately private) woodland, so I guess it lives close.  Apart from adding a little to my badger map of the area it was good to see one of the beasts again.  It’s the first live badger I’ve seen since September.  I feel like a proper Badger Watching Man again.