It’s been a sweltering hot day. This evening, I gave up on my landscape gardening with concrete, mortar and shovel, and set off for the badger sett across the river. The sun glared in my eyes and sweat trickled down my back as I walked along the track from the village, but it was pleasantly cool where it dropped towards the river through a narrow belt of trees.

As I crossed the bridge, the pair of swans which had nested in a pool beside the river were feeding at the water’s edge with their five cygnets, and house martins were zooming about collecting insects.

I walked along the river bank, climbed the style and crossed the meadow to the edge of the wood, looking for the blue haze under the trees as I approached the fence, but there was none. As I crossed the barbed wire, I saw that the blue bells had all gone to seed – a year gone by without seeing Quesse Wood at its best! I felt a pang of disappointment, like going to a museum to see a work of art only to find that the exhibition had been withdrawn and replaced by another of no interest. Never mind, it will be back again next year …

I crossed the boggy ground at the mouth of the valley and as I climbed the bank at the far side, a tawny owl gave a warning call – an early riser as the sun was still well above the horizon, brilliant sunbeams dappling the trees and ground foliage, in which uncountable numbers of insects danced. I quietly made my way along the side of the valley until I was opposite the badger sett, and settled down to examine it closely with the binoculars. I could see the hole from which the badgers always emerged first last year, but it did not seem very well used, and I was surprised by how high the vegetation was, making it difficult to see many of the other holes.

I stood looking at the familiar signs of badger activity around me – flattened vegetation, small holes in the earth where edible morsels had been pursued and extracted – and listening to the bird song. Not a sound from the tawny owls, but plenty from blackbird and robin, collared dove and magpie. After a while, I heard the calls announcing a ground predator, at which I used to look around for a fox, but I have so seldom seen the object of the bird’s alarm that I took little notice. Then into the field of view of my binoculars stepped two such objects.

They seemed like father and son, and while the younger man carried on walking along the woodland edge, the other crossed the barbed wire fence and examined the upper holes of the badger sett. He had on a cloth cap, carried a long stick, and had an appearance, a manner of movement, a body language which expressed ownership. I looked at his lined face through the binoculars and could not say that I recognized him, but I thought of a day about twenty years ago when I met the farmer who owned the next wood along, and talked to him about the badgers that lived in it.

On that day, the farmer talked to me about the wood in a most friendly way, and told me that I could watch the badgers there whenever I liked. Two weeks later, I was crossing the field towards the wood when I saw him on a tractor, and walked in his direction to greet him. He saw me coming, and immediately started towards me, raving about trespass in highly agricultural language. By the time that we were close enough for him to recognize me and for me to get a word in edgewise, he had said too much to retract, and my reminder of our previous meeting was met only by a warning to stay off his land or else! He was holding a thumb bloodied by an accident with his machinery, thus accounting for his ill temper, so I did not hold it against him, and merely made sure that when I went to watch the badgers in his wood, I was myself unobserved.

He finished his examination of the sett, re-crossed the barbed wire and set off across the potato field. I waited for a while, but there would be no badgers coming from the sett for a long while after such a disturbance, so I quietly made my way back down to the river. As I walked back along the river bank, the tawny owls started hooting to each other from the darkening wood above me.

17th August 1996

Rhiannon is a little girl with big dark eyes and clear brown skin, and has just come back after spending a couple of weeks on holiday in Spain. She has a non-stop brain with a direct connection to her mouth. She will be five in September. She knows what she wants, at any time of the day or night. She is my granddaughter.

My wife said that she is old enough to go badger-watching, and Rhiannon agreed. Yes she can be still. Yes she can be quiet. I had some doubts, but we set off in the car for the cubs sett last night, at a time which I hoped would not lead to a very long wait before the badgers appeared. I parked the car and lifted her over the barbed wire fence. We passed into the wood, Rhiannon talking about what she expected of these badgers in her loud clear voice, me shushing her desperately and whispering about what we would need to do to see the badgers.

When we came opposite the sett, I unrolled a camping mat and we both sat down on it. This was a good idea, because it meant that we did not rustle the dried up beech leaves which littered the floor, but it did not help with the problem of Rhiannon’s direct connection between brain and mouth.

Why aren’t the badgers here? Where will they come from? How long will they be?

She leant back against me and wriggled until she was lying flat on the ground. As the sun sank towards the horizon, light beams shone through the trees and lit up patches of the woodland floor. Dried leaves occasionally spiralled down from the canopy and birds sung their evening song.

I’m bored. Can we go home now?

A silhouette moved on the skyline further up the wood, and I pointed it out to Rhiannon in a whisper. “It’s a cow” she informed me, very clearly and with no little volume. She has seen lots of cows.

Fed up with badgers.

Rhiannon picked up a stick and started tapping out a rhythm on an old piece of tree trunk embedded in the ground beside us. She experimented with the sounds which can be obtained from the other materials which are within reach.

No badgers here. I’m tired. I want to go home now.

Amazingly, in a quiet interval , two badgers emerged and I pointed them out quickly before another whinge sent them down for the evening. Open-mouthed silence from Rhiannon. The badgers were both adults, and they quietly groomed themselves for a short while before moving off up the bank towards the field. Rhiannon had somehow learnt how to whisper, in an awed voice. Are they babies? Which one is the mummy? Where are they going?

We followed up onto the field, where a hare saw us and departed over the skyline, but there was no sign of the badgers. Watched suspiciously by the cattle, we walked across the field to where there used to be other holes some years ago, but they now looked abandoned. After scrambling back under the barbed wire, we walked back towards the sett, meeting a fox who quickly departed the way he came from. Rhiannon was bubbling with joy, full of adventure as we passed through the dim woodland in the rapidly falling dusk. There were no badgers around when we got back to the sett, so I rolled up the mat and we went back to the car.

It was a warm night, and we wound down the car windows as soon as we got in. Rhiannon was still excited and back up to full volume. Good night badgers! A little way down the road, a young rabbit sat on the grass verge, and I pointed it out to Rhiannon. Good night rabbit!

After a week’s holiday, the nights were drawing in rapidly, and I set off for the cubs sett on my bike at 7.30 p.m. in order to make sure that I was in good time. When I got to the wood, I found that there was a steady breeze blowing down the valley across the face of the sett, so I decided that I could try for some close-up video. I had seen enough of where the badgers liked to play and the directions they took to leave the sett to know that I would probably be undetected at a tree about ten yards from the main hole. I quickly crossed the boggy ground in the bottom of the valley, and took my stand, quietly removing the twigs from the trunk of the tree at my back which could betray my movement later.

As I stood leaning against the tree, I could hear the cattle browsing in the water meadow behind me, and the local robin singing his evening song. A blur of wings resolved itself into a small bird which alighted near the base of the tree in front of me, and then industriously moved up the tree examining the bark – a tree-creeper. When it reached a spot about twelve feet up, it flew to another tree and started again from the bottom of the trunk upwards. The low background hum of the wood signalled plenty of pickings for him and other insect-eaters.

The cubs came out fighting. They fell over the edge of the mound outside the hole and rolled in a ball down the slope to the floor of the valley, where they continued to attack each others ears and tails with fierce vigour. Suddenly one broke away and bounded up the valley, pursued by the other until, after a short distance, it whirled at bay and threatened his sibling with lowered head and fangs exposed. A brief parade before each other was ended by a swift pounce and the whirling wrestling match continued.

Mother came to the entrance and stood on the mound watching her offspring, somehow conveying a hint of maternal anxiety. Both cubs bounded up the slope and greeted her, one by climbing onto her back and attempting to chew her ears, and the other by doing a “bum-press” on her side, and then continuing the scrap with the other cub. For a long time, the cubs played with seemingly inexhaustible energy, while mother watched, groomed herself occasionally, and sometimes got scragged by the cubs.

Eventually, she ambled off up the slope from the sett, following a path which lead through a thorn bush near the edge of the wood. The cubs followed, still bouncing, still scrapping. Almost immediately, the other adult emerged and, after a brief scratch, followed them. The wood bordered a grass field in which cattle were grazing, and I wanted to find out where my badgers were headed. Were they going into the field, or travelling up the wood towards the road?

I quietly walked up the floor of the valley, watching the skyline above me and listening for badger sounds. When I came to a barbed wire fence across the valley, I examined the bottom strand closely for badger hairs, and looked for signs of a regular path up the wood, but there were neither. If these badgers did regularly go across the road to Quesse Wood and the other sett, they must go up into the field first. I returned towards the sett, and froze as I heard the snorting and rustling noises of a foraging badger. It was above me at the edge of the wood, silhouetted on the skyline as it rooted in the grass.

I moved on, looking for the others, but one of them must have seen me first, for there was a sudden rush and scamper along the path back to the sett. Back at my original stand, I watched with binoculars as the remaining badger came cautiously down the slope towards the bottom of the valley along which I had walked just a few minutes before. It was one of the adults, and from the broad head, I took it to be the male.

When he came to my trail, he nosed the ground cautiously, and then an extraordinary change came over him as all of his body hairs stood on end. With a body grotesquely enlarged by the outstretched fur, apparently surrounded by a halo due to the white tips to each hair, he stalked along the valley floor on legs which seemed unnaturally long, a few steps at a time. The hairs on the head remained flat, making it seem small in proportion to the body, and he glared from side to side, looking for the source of the alien taint upon the ground. He had suddenly changed from an animal which exuded bumbling good nature mixed with caution to one which conveyed menace, and barely suppressed violence. Looking through the binoculars, I felt a rush of adrenalin as the quiet wood for a moment lost its ordinary safe quality and just for a moment seemed to be owned by a being with power and baleful intent, but the feeling disappeared as quickly as it came.

The badger returned to the hole where the others greeted him, and after some reassuring scratchings and groomings, the family again wandered off. I left in the opposite direction, pondering on their astonishing tolerance of my disturbance.

I recovered my breath at the top of the slope, scanned the field with Quesse Wood looming behind it with my binoculars, and tried to determine the direction of the wind. It was a warm evening, with high wisps of cloud forming herringbone tracery across a blue sky, and no wind existed to have any direction. No good for close-up badger watching.

I hid my bike among the thistles in the clearing beside the wood containing the cubs’ sett, and quietly moved a little way down the slope until I could just make out the main hole through the trees on the opposite bank. Behind me was the thin strip of woodland that cloaked the bluff overlooking the flood plain of the Pettypool Brook, and I was hoping to find out why the badgers had departed so enthusiastically in this direction on the two evenings I watched this sett last week.

Through the binoculars, I could see a bundle of dry grass, bedding left out to dry the previous night, and a large stone with which the cubs had probably been playing, lying on the mound of earth outside the hole. Within five minutes, the cubs appeared at the entrance, and immediately took the bedding down the hole before returning in order to play with each other and scratch companionably.

It was some time before one of them crossed the valley towards me, but instead of climbing the bank to my left, as they had done previously, it came straight up towards me and stopped in alarm just a couple of yards away. There was still no wind at all, so my scent would be moving outwards in all directions, and the cub was obviously getting the full effect, jerking his nose in the air in all directions, trying to gauge the danger. All the time, I was in full view, in good light, sitting on the bank absolutely motionless with the video camera rolling, but as usual, he could not make out what I was while I stayed absolutely still. This was not an easy matter, sitting on the steep slope, and my locked muscles became more and more painful as the cub hesitated and it was a relief when eventually he turned and dashed back to the sett.

The cub rejoined his sibling and carried on playing, seeming quite unconcerned by the disturbance. It was quarter of an hour later that one of them crossed the valley and climbed the bank to my left. When it reached the top, I got up and silently tried to locate it. I stalked along the top, listening intently and ready to freeze at any moment if the badger came into view, but it was no good – he must have made off along the top of the bank at speed and was out of sight.

I climbed down the slope until I could see the sett from the floor of the valley and waited. The light was failing rapidly now under the trees, and I studied the holes with binoculars until the other cub reappeared, and was followed by the two adults. Behind me, I became aware of a chomping noise and quiet feet moving through grass, which came closer and closer. When the noise stopped, I turned my head and found that I was being regarded with grave interest by a young heifer, and I was concerned that I might soon be surrounded by the whole herd, which would be the end of my badger watching for the evening. However, after a while, she lost interest in me and moved off.

The badgers, meanwhile, were engaged in their usual scratching and grooming, quite unaffected by browsing cattle and cars on the road close by. I quietly moved up the bank, deciding that it was time to go, but suddenly there was a crashing and scampering as the cub who had left earlier returned. He had obviously come across my scent trail on his way back, and dashed back in alarm. Where had he been? There would have been time for him to get to the Old Mill and back, so perhaps somebody is putting out scraps there.

I found my bike and set off down the road towards the swing bridge across the river. As I crossed the bridge, the tracery of high clouds formed a pattern in pink and purple against the darkening sky, and as I cycled up the wooded track to the village, bats flickered above me as they hunted moths in the gloom.

I set off for the cubs sett early to make sure that I was in position before they emerged, but even so, I was standing next to my tree opposite the sett for only a few minutes before one of the cubs emerged – backwards. It was tustling with the other cub, and after a brief scuffle in the tunnel entrance, they both emerged onto the mound where they continued to scrap with oblivious enthusiasm.

Just as they both rolled off the edge of the mound and fell to the valley bottom, the mother came up and watched them, rather anxiously, as they continued their game for a while. They then moved into the vegetation in the valley bottom and browsed a little, but one soon crossed the boggy ground via the dead tree and scampered up the slope in the direction they took last night. The other was joined by its mother and greeted her with a nuzzle and a “bum-press”. Badgers have a scent gland under their tail, and they frequently press their backsides on other members of their clan in order to transfer some of their scent onto them.

Mother and cub continued to browse for a short while, but the first cub came running down the slope, to be greeted by its sibling with another friendly attack with open mouth and shaking head. The pair of them then broke off and dashed back up the slope as they did last night, looking rather like a pair of teenagers off on a night out. Mother followed them more sedately, and rather anxiously, as if worried about whether her offspring were getting into bad company.

I hesitated, wondering what to do. Their behaviour was most unusual, as the family would normally socialise around the sett until around dusk before going off for the night’s hunting, but the cubs had dashed off in the same direction almost immediately for two nights in a row. I decided to try to follow them to find out what was going on, rather than stay to watch the remaining adult emerge, and scrambled up the bank as quietly as I could.

There was no sign of the badgers at the top, so I followed the cattle path along the slope which overlooked the flood plain of the Pettypool Brook, on which a herd of cattle were browsing. Two possibilities came to mind. Perhaps they had found a wasp’s nest which they had partially destroyed on previous evenings, and they were going to finish the job – it was the right time of year for it. Alternatively, somebody was putting out food for them and straight ahead of me were the nearest buildings, the Old Mill, with Mill Cottage behind it.

I climbed up the slope to the road and walked down to the Old Mill. A public footpath ran around the outside of both properties, and I walked slowly and silently past. I could not see any badgers there, nor could I hear any munching or squabbling noises, so I continued across the footbridge to the other side of the stream and followed the path to where I could scan the slope from where I had come with my binoculars. No sign of the badgers.

Walking back to the road, I examined the fence beside the path with its netting and barbed wire, looking for signs of a run where badgers might habitually cross under it to get to the gardens, but there was nothing. As I walked back up the road, I looked for runs through the hedge on one side and barbed wire fence on the other, again with no success. I returned to the sett, very quietly, but there was nothing to be seen so I retrieved my bike and cycled home.

Arriving at the edge of the village, I came across a hedgehog, standing in the gutter, staring intently across the pavement. As I bowled around the corner, I saw the objects of its attention – four teenage lads sitting around, perhaps discussing the local female talent in the twilight. Do hedgehogs often go people-watching? What do they get out of it if they do? How do they interpret the behaviour which they see? No, I should think it is only the occasional odd character with the mis-placed patience and time to waste which engages in this odd behaviour …