Two consecutive video clips showing an encounter between two badgers at 5 o’clock in the morning.
Obviously two members of the same clan.
Tag Archives: badger
Badger Love
Winter sunshine illuminating a badger sett. My camera trap revealed that on the night of the 8th-9th, the mound outside the hole was the scene of red-hot badger sex, lasting for much of the night.
Probably this was an example of post-partum mating, meaning mating after the female had given birth to cubs, so I am looking forward now to seeing them above ground in a few weeks time.
These are the holes mentioned in “The Death of a Tree” post, so the badgers living here are the successors of the orphaned cubs of forty years ago. Good to know that the clan are doing well.
Acorns, squirrels and badgers
At the moment, I am using my camera trap to try to find out how many badgers are in each of my local setts, what holes they are using, and where they socialise (mutual grooming and suchlike). For the last couple of days, I have put it on a tree, watching the exit path from a sett that is not easy to watch without being detected.
When I looked at the results from the first session (just 24 hours), I was surprised to see that I had over 60 video clips – I was expecting to just be able to count the badgers going off hunting, and then returning. However, a lot of the clips were daytime, and here’s a typical one :
Apart from the farm cat and a group of pigeons, all of the daytime clips were of a squirrel, sometimes a pair, foraging in this area and burying acorns. That night, out come the badgers :
The badgers – 4 or 5 of them in the sett – spent a lot of time in this area, seeming mostly to be just snuffling amongst the leaves. They did not dig up any acorns – there were plenty lying around on the surface – but certainly seemed curious about the activities of the squirrels. On the other hand, they showed no response at all to the scent of the farm cat who passed along the badger path at a time when there were no badgers in sight.
Lovely piece of kit, this camera trap. Adds another dimension to badger-watching!
Look what I’ve got!
I’ve been scanning some ancient negatives today. This one always raises a laugh at my talks on badgers – taken in 1973, judging by photos of my daughters on the same film strip. I remember showing a print of this photo to my mother, who said “Aww – isn’t she sweet?”
Badger hole in Newbridge Wood
I’m lighting up badger setts with a two flash setup – the key light on a lighting stand or bolted to a tree to splash light from the side, and a flash on the camera to put detail in the shadows. However, to get a nighttime look, perhaps it’s better to just use the one key light as above, leaving the shadows black and featureless.
I could do with more cooperation from the badgers.