Day 333 - Busy Badgers

brock

It was full dark by the time I got home and took Robin out for a walk - but tonight we had a mission!

You may remember a few days ago, when The Boy Wonder told us which badger hole was most active...as a result of that, the next day we took the trailcam up there...tonight, it was time to retrieve it and see whether we'd had any luck.

I wasn't home until 6.20pm, and by the time I'd had coffee, fed the dog and generally got my shit together, it was getting towards 7pm. 

The cam is up in a small patch of trees at the top of the orchard.  The walk up there involves crossing a large, open sheep field, taking a gate leading to a  path through the woods to the orchard, then hiking up to the top of the orchard and through another gate. 

It's very dark up there! 

I have a new head-torch which is amazingly bright, and tonight was a good test for it.  This photo was taken on the path through the woods.

dipped beam

I couldn't get my phone to take a better photo than this, although it wasn't until I got home that I realised I'd got my head torch on the lowest setting...even on this setting, the beam travels at least 60m across a clear field, it's quite incredible - tho' it really doesn't show in this photo, I know...

Anyway, on to the trailcam itself...

Approximately 90 minutes earlier, the camera had caught the handsome badger pictured above, emerging from the hole that Robin alerted us to...this was from just one of around twenty 60-second video clips the camera had taken over the previous 48 hours or so.

All are at night, using infra-red, and they're all of badgers using this very active hole!

brocks

We're not sure exactly how many badgers there are, but we do know there's at least two!

One of them was busily gathering bedding and dragging it down into the hole...the other one appeared to be just bimbling about doing his own thing!

bundling

This one was dragging a pile of loose hay underneath him with his front paws.  Once bundled in this way it seemed relatively easy to drag backwards down into the sett.

Here are some clips of the various moments of activity that the trailcam caught:




It looks like the badgers are well fed, and well prepared for the coming winter...

It's great to see them doing so well!

:-)