Where are this year’s cubs from the Quesse Wood clan?

Across a field is another wood, nameless on the maps, split by the road coming from the swing bridge across the river. As usual for small Cheshire woods, it fills a small valley which opens onto the flood plain of the Pettypool Brook, a small stream which runs into the river just downstream of the swing bridge. Near the mouth of the valley was a small sett, just two holes, and I have always believed it to be an outlying sett of the Quesse Wood clan, since the year when I found it, a long time ago. There is a badger run across the road, usually well-used, and less than half a mile between the outlier and the main sett. Can it be that the female in milk that I saw at the main sett on one occasion was just visiting, and she then took her family back to the outlying sett?

Tonight I set off on my bike to test my latest theory. I bumped down the track to the river and crossed the swing bridge, the wooden beams making a distinctive rumble. Onto the road and across the Pettypool Brook, I bowled past the Old Mill with its refurbished mill wheel which is nowhere near the present course of the brook. This loops around behind the old black-and-white cottage in which Old Man Guntripp lived and died.

I puffed up the slope towards the wood and stopped at the top to check the wind direction before climbing the barbed wire into the wood. I quietly crossed to where the ground dropped away into the valley and hid the bike from view from the road, before moving down the slope as quietly as possible. There were dried-up beech leaves littering the ground, and I inevitably made some noise as I came down opposite the sett and settled behind a tree. The canopy was denser than Quesse Wood, and there was very little bird song to disturb an intense silence, so the rustle of the leaves announcing my arrival seemed more like a roll of drums.

Almost immediately, a black and white head appeared at the hole, and stared across the valley in my direction. The badger then came right out of the hole, and I could see that it was small, and had the characteristic bump on the nose above the eyes – it was a cub!

It wandered down the slope and climbed onto a fallen down tree which was lying in the boggy ground, which was all that was left of the stream, in the bottom of the valley. I had been lucky in choosing my spot, because the stump of the tree lay on the ground a few yards to my left. The cub walked and scrambled across the dead branches, and stopped beside me while he tested the air thoroughly. The wind had died and my scent must have been spreading out from me in all directions, but the cub had not learnt of any danger associated with human scent by experience or the example of adults, so he just shrugged his shoulders metaphorically and trundled off, climbing the valley side.

After a few minutes, a second cub emerged and immediately set off in the same direction, but when an adult came to the entrance ten minutes later, it considered the world outside with suspicion and went back down again. I watched a herd of cows drift past the mouth of the valley, then back in the opposite direction. A shire horse – those with the big feet – browsed a little amongst the trees and moved on. It was over half an hour later, with darkness falling and a flock of bats hunting up and down the valley in front of me, when an adult badger emerged and hunted a little in the vegetation at the valley bottom, while a second adult just came to the entrance and watched cautiously. When they both returned below, I left as quietly as I could.

The behaviour of both the cubs and the adults make me feel that they must have been up already when I arrived. Without disturbance, the family would surely have emerged together and engaged in the usual scratching and grooming activities that take place on a warm summer evening like that of today. My arrival must have sent them all down, and the adults behaviour was typically suspicious, but the cubs are old enough to ignore their grownups’ warnings and take their own counsel. How similar badgers are to humans sometimes!

A couple of weeks ago, I made another attempt to solve the mystery of why there are no badger cubs in the Quesse Wood sett, despite the fact that I have seen a female there who was obviously in milk. Too tired and busy to write this up before.

The wood is in a valley, created by a seasonal stream in the sandy soil, with farm fields on either side, which opens onto the main river valley. The main badger sett is about a hundred yards up the valley, but there is a smaller sett consisting of just a couple of holes on the bluff overlooking the valley mouth. I made my way slowly and quietly through the brambles until I stood with my back to a tree a few yards from the hole.

The bird life of the wood settled down after my arrival, and I listened to the resumed songs of robin, blackbird, collared dove and blue tits while I thought about what I might see. At the end of May, a fox had screamed as I left in darkness on the other side of the valley, and from a spot very close to where I was standing. The previous week, the first badger up from the main sett had immediately left towards these holes, and he may have been going to greet a young family here – I have noticed that the male badger often occupies a different part of the sett to the mother and cubs and “visits” at the start of an evening. The hole in front of me showed signs of use, but would it be fox or badger?

Ten minutes later, the badger came around the corner from the main sett and put his head in the entrance to the hole. However, he immediately continued along the path, stopped for a scratch just two yards in front of me, and then continued slowly down the slope towards the valley floor, filled with lush green vegetation and breakfast.

This answered my question. I did not believe that he would have ignored these holes had there been badgers inside, and anyway, a family of cubs would have been up and playing outside by then. No cubs here either.

I moved through the wood towards the main sett along the badger path, whose smooth surface, free of dead leaves and twigs, enabled silent movement which would have been impossible anywhere else in the wood. When I came through a clump of trees and could see the mounds of earth outside the nearest holes of the sett, another badger came down the slope and trotted along the path towards me, confident and relaxed. I held my body absolutely motionless, knowing their inability to recognize shapes, and waited to see what would happen.

About four yards from me, the badger stopped and stared at me in surprise and puzzlement. There hadn’t been a tree in the middle of the path last night! He tossed his nose in the air several times in the characteristic gesture used to test for scent, but I knew better than to waste my time approaching a sett from up-wind. He put his head on one side while considering me closely, then whirled around and dashed back to the sett with the characteristic looping bounds which betray his kinship to otters, stoats and weasels. However, he was not unduly alarmed because he stopped when he reached the first mound, looked around, then climbed the slope casually.

Not wishing to cause any more disturbance, I turned around and went home in good light for once, puzzled by my inability to find this clan’s cubs.

I walked down the track to the river, past the newly mown hayfield with the cut grass lying in dark ridges as the sun dipped toward the horizon. After crossing the swing bridge, I made my way along the bank of the river, crossed the water meadow and entered the bottom end of Quesse Wood, where the bluebell leaves lay flat on the ground with the green seed capsules swelling on the flower stalks. The valley bottom was filled with a green froth of vegetation, and when I climbed the valley side and entered the clearing where a few blue flowers still lingered, I found that I had to push through lanky stalks of bracken which would soon form an impenetrable jungle. High summer approaches.

I moved quietly along the badger path until I came opposite the sett and scanned it with my binoculars. Grass and brambles were sprouting higher and the trees were in full leaf, so it was more difficult to see the mounds of earth outside the holes. However, the trees in Quesse Wood are mature and widely spaced, letting in ample light, and I was confident that none of the clan were above ground.

Immersed in bird song and insect hum, my mind was elsewhere until I spotted a movement on the opposite bank. A badger was trundling along the path leading to the mouth of the valley, and I followed his progress through my binoculars until he disappeared among the trees towards some outlying holes. I turned my attention back to the main hole just in time to see another badger emerge and climb up to the slope above the hole, where, to my surprise, there were already three other badgers scratching their bellies and grooming each other.

I scrutinised them closely, but none of them were cubs, and I had been so sure that there was a family in the sett weeks ago when I had seen a female badger expose her well developed teats when she rolled on her back for a vigorous scratch. I pondered the problem of where the cubs could be while the group socialised companionably. Suddenly the badgers scattered, going to ground in several different holes, but I could see and hear no reason for their alarm. Had the wind blowing gently from the fields into the wood carried a whiff of scent from a farmer doing his rounds? If it had, it must have been very faint, because after a few minutes, the badgers reappeared looking rather shamefaced.

Quietly leaving the area of the sett, I crossed the valley and climbed up the other side and came out of the wood into a field full of potato plants. I walked in the shade of the overgrown hedge along the top of the bluff overlooking the river at ten o’clock in good light at the end of one of the longest days in the year. Two fields along I came to another wood, where I had watched badgers long ago, and remembered how sad I had been when the landowner destroyed the wood, felling all the mature trees. I walked along the edge of the wood until I came to the point where I had always entered the wood, and peered into the gloom for the first time for years. The saplings which had survived the massacre had grown into trees, massed closely together and blocking out the light.

I climbed over the barbed wire, and entered a strange dark world, littered with dead bramble strands which had probably lost the competition for light to the saplings years ago. I had to stoop and dodge to avoid them and the low branches on the trees as I made my way towards where the old badger sett had been. Had the mother badger brought her cubs here to avoid disturbance at the main sett?

Using the shape of the ground in the darkness to find my way, I came to where the earth appeared to have slipped forward and down, bulging out into the valley which dropped down to the stream. Generations of badgers had laboured here, moving tons of soil over the years as they dug their holes and enlarged their living quarters. Here I had sat on many long distant evenings in a majestic oak tree watching badgers emerge from a hole between the roots of another oak. As I approached the spot, I thought that there was still holes there, but then realised that they were the sockets of oak tree stumps which were slowly mouldering away. There were no badger holes there at all.

I fought my way out of the wood into the late daylight, and made my way down to the water meadow, where a herd of cattle stared at me curiously. When I came to the swing bridge, I saw a couple of horses in the field across the road and for some reason leant on the gate and scanned the field with my binoculars in the twilight. Immediately I spotted a badger on the far side going through the typical motions of worm hunting. I knew where he had come from – a sett above the stream behind the farmhouse where Old Man Guntripp had lived. Guntripp is long gone, like the oak trees whose mouldering remains had triggered memories from a time when he was alive.

The darkness deepened as I walked back up the track to the village, and as I reached the top and the sweet smell of mown hay filled my nostrils, a bat flickered around me, feasting on moths.

The setting sun glared in my eyes as I set off down the track from the village, but it was pleasantly cool as it dropped down into the wooded cleft that lead to the river, the trees being in full leaf now. Many of the trees beside the track were hawthorn, white with blossom, and the air was full of their musky odour. I have always found the smell erotic, though why I do not know. When I mentioned this to my wife last week, not having done so before, she said that hawthorn blossom scent had no such meaning or effect on her. Pity.

I walked along the river until I was opposite Quesse Wood and crossed the water meadow to the mouth of the valley. In the wood, the carpet of bluebell flowers had disappeared, leaving the ground covered by their leaves lying flat on the ground and the green seedheads standing on their stalks, except for a small clearing where they were still in flower. I have not noticed this before, and wondered whether these flowers last longer or whether they flower later because of the light.

As I scanned the badger sett through binoculars from the other side of the valley, insects danced in the light of the setting sun. It was half an hour before the first badger came up just after nine o’clock, scratched itself half-heartedly and went down again. A second badger appeared, looking larger than the first one, and listened intently while a dog yelped and whined in the distance, probably in the farmyard three fields away. It seemed quite disturbed by the noise, and suddenly darted back down the hole.

The breeze faded to nothing, and with my binoculars I could see that a myriad insects had taken to the air. Mosquitos which had to be dispatched silently kept landing on my hands, ears and face, but as the light went, so did the insects. There was no action from the sett until after half past nine, when a badger came up and ambled a few yards along the path leading from the hole and started gathering grass and leaves together into a bundle with its front legs. It then humped its way back along the path with the bundle tucked under its chin and dragged it down the hole.

And then nothing. Why are these badgers so cautious? I am certain there are cubs in the sett, and usually by this time of year they are coming up early and indulging in boisterous play. I left after ten o’clock, and walked back along the river, disturbing several herons at widely spaced intervals, standing like sentries at the waters edge.

Yesterday had been a beautiful sunny day, but in the late afternoon, the clouds rolled in and I walked across the fields towards Double Wood in the evening under a low threatening sky.

I left the footpath just after crossing the stream in the bottom of the wood and forced my way through thick vegetation very slowly in order to make no noise. I came to where the side of the valley reared up suddenly, thickly covered with trees and bushes, to the badger sett at the top, and stopped suddenly as I heard a familiar quiet whickering noise from up above. In my mind’s eye, I could see the scene – two or three badgers bounding about joyously, playfully chasing each other’s tail.

I stood motionless, waiting to hear more and judge where they were, because although the main hole was immediately above me, there were several other holes further along the bank outside which they could be playing. After several minutes, hearing no more from them, I started to climb the bank, moving in slow motion, and taking great care of my handholds in order to make no noise which would give me away. Eventually, I reached the top and stood with my back to the oak tree, facing the main hole a few yards away.

For the next hour, I saw and heard nothing from the badgers. A robin sang his song from the top of my oak tree, a jay landed on a branch, swore when he saw me and fled, and magpies shouted raucously. As the light faded, the tawny owls took up their duet further down the wood and lapwings flying circuits above the field uttered their weird, ghostly calls which had so alarmed me many years ago when I did not know what sort of living thing made such a noise.

The wind remained strong from the south, so the badgers could not possibly smell my presence, and I was confident that they had not heard me, so I puzzled over where they were and what they were doing. I also wondered whether the vegetation had been as high at this time last year, whether I should go to watch one of the fifty odd other setts I know next time, and how come it was June and I hadn’t seen one of this year’s cubs yet.

I heard a shuffling noise behind me, and looking down the slope up which I had climbed, I could see a badger snuffling in the greenery, probably looking for worms. As it quested forward, I could see where I had walked an hour previously just a yard downwind from its nose, and an instant later it gave a loud snort of disgust and dashed off along the bottom of the wood.

I climbed back down the bank and walked along the bottom of the valley in the twilight, beside green wedges of flag iris and the fledgling shoots of butterbur which would form canopies of huge leaves later in the summer. The stream tinkled beside me, and I felt again that Double Wood was a beautiful and possibly magical place.