With all the excitement of the tawny owlets, the badgers took second place in terms of checking their antics for the week. When I did have a look through their cameras, I was pleased to see wee have the two youngsters still using both artificial setts on site; the original one and the new one with the cameras inside. They are sill reluctant to spend the daytime in the camera sett chambers, preferring to return to the other one in the early hours.
As the daylight hours increase, I always look forward to seeing these guys in the light, and not just in the IR lighting. They tend to come out about 8pm and it is just light then now. I must get the Bushnell out there as its always nice to capture some daytime footage of them.
They have been spending a lot of time in the night sleeping in the camera sett. After sleeping all day in the other sett, I am always surprised how much night time sleeping they do as well! May be with all the food available at Yew View, these guys don’t need to spend as much time foraging. They were joined by a third badger this week. It is really difficult to ID these, but I think this might be their mother. One of them has a rather horrible injury on its nose… look like it could have been cut on wire of similar as it is a deep wound right across the nose. It does not seem to be causing many issues. These creatures are amazingly resilient….
Just take a look at their feet in this clip. They have a very distinctive footprint and you can see why! The rear feet are huge and very long. The front feet are like spades with very long claws…
These two visit the night feeding station, along with a couple of foxes and a black cat. There can often be a bit of argy-bargy between them as they search for the peanuts, egg and apple we often put out for them.
The main sett is about half a mile away. I must get down there with the Bushnells as we should be seeing this year’s cubs out and about now! It is always lovely to watch these creatures underground and it never ceases to amaze me how much they remind me of my dogs… apart from mine don’t scratch that much!!!
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