The long spell of hot, sultry weather finally broke with two days of rain, but it was dry and pleasantly cool as I set off down the track from the village. I suppose that the summer has broken as well, as I noticed that old, brown foliage was beginning to predominate over the green in the hedgerows and verges.

The sun shone through a gap in the clouds just before it set, and as I crossed the swing bridge, it dropped below the horizon and lit up the underneath of the clouds covering the rest of the sky. The pink light fell everywhere, creating an unearthly colour cast which might be everyday on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri.

I hurried along the river bank, as I felt that the badgers would soon be up, and was startled by a heron flying off from the water’s edge beside me with a harsh croak. Further on, a dragonfly kept me company, flying beside me as if on escort duty until the path skirted the trees where Quesse Wood came down to the river.

I crossed the water meadow and entered the gloomy wood. The undergrowth was already dying down, and I easily moved along the path to the mouth of the valley and crossed the stream, climbing the bank on the other side. I then made my way silently along the wood until I was directly opposite the sett, standing beside two badger holes which are never used and were probably the result of young badgers practicing their home building skills before departing their home sett.

With the naked eye, I could see nothing of the holes and mounds of earth on the bank opposite, but they were revealed clearly by the binoculars. I settled down for a long wait, as the badgers now have a long night in which to hunt, and can indulge in a lie-in if they feel like it. After some time, relieved only by occasional bird song and a train for Liverpool, I heard, just above the threshold of gossamer sound that my eardrums could detect, a swish-swish sound coming from the mouth of the valley.

I thought of a night a long time ago when I heard a similar sound. I slipped down from my tree and with infinite care, slowly approached the source of the sound in almost pitch darkness, feeling the ground for sticks before putting weight down on each step, eyes and ears collecting each scrap of light and sound, mind interpreting them into a badger quartering the bottom of the valley for earthworms and grubs. Suddenly the eye detected an irregular area of white which moved in an un-badger-like manner, just as the ear had no trouble hearing a loud harrumph! as the cow accompanied me in mutual awareness.

Not so, tonight. There were no cattle in the fields on either side of the wood, and there was a mini-sett on the slope above the mouth of the valley. It was definitely a badger, down among the vegetation on the valley floor. I scanned the whole area with the binoculars, but despite the dying down of the vegetation, there was still too much of it for me to see the source of the noise.

I could put a picture to the noise. Badgers sleep in a nest chamber lined with dry grass and other vegetation, and periodically, they renew their bedding. On such a night, they go a little way from the sett, scrape a bundle of fresh bedding together and, tucking it between their chin and front legs, hobble backwards to the hole and drag it down. The swish-swish died away, and the badger must have made it back to the hole. Over a period of about ten minutes, I heard the badger make three more bedding collections, and then the sound was replaced by more general movement sounds, small twig snappings and leaf scrapings, but I had difficulty keeping track of the direction and distance of the animal.

About five yards in front of me was a large sycamore tree. Its upper trunk and branches could be seen against the still luminescent western sky, but to the naked eye, its lower trunk could hardly be distinguished in the darkness. Suddenly a small patch of white appeared beside its base, and I put the binoculars to my eyes immediately, as an adult badger ambled across in front of me to the cubs hole where it sniffed the entrance and then gazed at me. Seeing nothing significant, he slowly climbed the slope, passing within two yards of where I stood motionless and almost breathless. Next to the barbed wire, he stopped and looked around, a black silhouette just distinguishable from the dark grey sky behind, and then slipped out into the field.

I climbed the slope as quietly as I could, but when I got to the top and scanned the field, he was gone. I walked across a couple of fields to the road, checking the shadows in the grass with the binoculars and watching the way a car’s headlights lit the trees and hedgerows as it went by. As I passed the Old Mill, I thought of the original owner of Quesse Wood, Old Man Guntripp, who was murdered there, and walked on in the darkness back to the river and home.