Watching badgers, in theory, should be quite simple. All you need to do is to find an active sett and be there (suitably downwind and out of sight) when the badgers come out in the evening. I’ve covered the first part – finding an active sett – in an earlier post (see How to Recognise a Badger Sett). Now I’ll say a little about the second part – when the badgers come out of their sett.
Badgers are nocturnal: they sleep during the day and are active at night. They emerge from their sett in the evening to play, socialise and forage. Unfortunately for the badger watcher they don’t come out at exactly the same time every evening. They vary the time of emergence from day-to-day and month to month.
Generally speaking, the time that badgers come out is governed by the time of sunset, earlier in winter and later in summer. It is a little more complicated than this though, as they will often emerge while it is still light. Badgers need enough time to find food, so during the summer when nights are short they will come out before the sun has set to give them sufficient foraging time. In winter, when the nights are longer and the badgers are less active, they will emerge well after dark.
There are other factors that affect the time of emergence though. Neal and Cheeseman, in the classic book Badgers, list a number of these. For example, badgers will come out later when there is more light. Those in a sett that catches the light of the setting sun may well emerge later than those in a sett that is in shadow. Nights when there is a bright moon may also mean the badgers come out later.
Weather plays a role too. Badgers may come out later in strong wind or heavy rain, probably because they cannot detect danger as well in these conditions and they feel less secure. Linked to weather is the availability of food: damp nights are better for catching worms so the badgers may come out earlier to feed. On the other hand, a prolonged dry spell may also see them coming out earlier as they are under pressure to find food and need to spend longer foraging. The same may be true of sows with cubs, who according to Neal and Cheeseman are often the first to leave the sett in the evening, presumably to get as much food as possible. Lastly, human disturbance may keep the badgers underground for longer. Setts that are subject to regular human activity tend to emerge later.
All of this means that whilst it is possible to estimate the general time that the badgers will emerge, predicting the precise time is much more difficult.
Here’s where this blog comes in. The main reason for writing this blog is to provide a journal for my experiences, to record details that hopefully will prove useful at some point in the future. Since the beginning, one of the things I have been careful to record is the time that the badgers emerge from the sett. My hope was that by keeping track of these I’d be able to find a pattern and be able to predict their movements much more accurately. I’ve now had a chance to look back through the archives from the last two years and plot a graph of badger emergence times at different times of year.
Each point on the graph represents a time when the first badger emerged from the sett. To show how this varies across the year I have split the graph into half-months. I obviously don’t do enough badger watching before April and after August!
The first thing to notice is that there is a wide range of times in each month, so there is a lot of variation in times of emergence. In June, for instance, the badgers have come out as early as 7.00pm and as late as nearly 9.00pm. The 7.00pm event may have been an anomaly – it was an undersized cub that acted strangely – but there’s still a big variation.
The data set for the graph is statistically too small to support firm conclusions, but it still helps to build a picture of emergence. For instance, it does seem that the badgers come out slightly later in May and June than they do in August. The graph also shows that in almost all cases the badgers emerged after 7.30pm and usually around 8.00pm, so it does at least allow me to judge the time I need to arrive at the sett.
Neal and Cheeseman have a much better graph in their book, based on hundreds of observations. Anyone interested in the subject would be well advised to have a look at it. Nevertheless, I’m quite proud of this little graph of mine. It’s based on my own fieldwork and the records I’ve kept of my own experiences. If you are thinking of going to watch badgers I hope it is of some use to you in planning your visits.
Tales from the Wood - The Diary of a Badger Watching Man 
At the moment, the badgers in the setts that I keep an eye on are up and away from around 1800 hours. As far as I can make out they travel up to a mile from their setts. The older badgers tend to go foraging on their own and the younger ones go out in threes or fours; just like our children – except our children don’t usually snack on worms and beetles. The other thing to bear in mind, is that setts can have more than one entrance/exit and you can wait all night at one particular hole, when the badger has gone out for the night and returned by the back door. I find that a few flavoured rice nuts thrown in a sett entrance will encourage the badger to use the front door; as long as you are sitting quietly down wind. An image intensifier is an excellent tool for badger watching, or a infra-red camera trap for those watchers who want to go to bed early
Hi there, thank you for such an interesting article.
Would it be possible for badgers to make a home in/under my compost heap at the bottom of my garden, down hill?
I live on a hillside, in the outskirsts of Brighton, I have been noticing some very strange, shallow, burrowing attempts in my front garden also.
My next door neighbour has a very over grown back garden, it is very shady and both his and my garden are pretty peaceful too.
My compost heap has a largish entrance to the left and right side, there is evidence of digging, what would have been great compost at the bottom.
I have considered the possibility of rats, as I am aware compost heaps may be an attractive option for them, just thought I would ask if badgers might also consider this an option too?
Thank you
Hi Zelley, and welcome
I haven’t heard of badgers in compost heaps before, although this doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. My first thought would be rats, simply because I regularly have rats in my compost heap. They can shift a surprisingly large amount of soil too. I’m afraid I trap my rats because the compost is for the vegetable garden and rats are a health hazard, but ironically they do help to make very good compost. Their burrows aerate the heap and they drag down the fresher items (cabbage leaves, carrot ends etc) so everything circulates. It’s a shame the little blighters carry Weil’s disease.
But I digress. I’d go out and spread a layer of sand around the heap, smooth it down, and have a look the next morning to see what tracks you get. That should answer the question.
All the best
BWM
we think we have badgers in our woodland at allerton park knaresborough we wonderd if they would harm our little toy poodle.
Hello there Mr or Mrs Marcroft, and welcome
I would say there is no chance of any harm coming to your dog. Badgers are by nature shy and timid, and will always turn and run rather than stand and fight (unless it’s with another badger, but that’s a different matter). And like any wild animal, a trapped or injured badger should be given a wide berth. But otherwise many people live alongside badgers without even knowing it, let alone having any trouble.
I hope this helps to put your mind at rest
All the best
BWM
Brighton – Large garden always had badgers but no real problems, This week as seen a massive increase in digging what looks like a large tunnel surrounded by masses of soil – never seen anything like this hole in 20 years living here. Do you know whats going on?
Brighton – had badgers for many years no real problem. During the last two/three weeks a tunnel has appeared with masses of soil dug up very deep and dangerous.
I live in Hilperton Trowbridge Wiltshire (BA14). On Friday afternoon (!4.00 Hrs – 26/10/12). A badger run through my garden, not sure where it went but my question is is this an unusual sighting?
Good site, just got a letter from the department of agriculture in ireland, looking for badger setts on my land…..i wonder why? i hope they are not going to cull them or something…i found a few setts, i only ever seen a badger twice. But i know they are there.
Hi we had a badger in our paddock on Wednesday 30th january 2013, at 11h00 it looked healthy and was happily foraging, it came within 3m of me when I deliberately made it aware that I was there, it moved away a couple of metres and then carried of looking for his lunch but not before we got some video footage and lots of photographs. We sighted another (possibly the same one) last night 31st, at 17h00 in another paddock, both paddocks edge the house which would have placed the badger no further than 5 – 10 metres from the building.
This is only the second time we have had badgers so close to the house in the 11 years of living here and never in the daytime.
Thanks
David Moore
Aberdeenshire
I have discovered a badger behind my garden on a small grassy hill, it appears to come from under my neighbours fence and I saw it pop out of there yesterday, I have seen it three times in last two weeks, does mean there is a sett there? Is it unusual for badgers to live in built up areas??