Badgers

In June 2020, my father and I had one of my most memorable wildlife encounters to date. We headed out on our daily lockdown walk encompassing the fields close to our home, but this time just as we were heading back I spotted a grey-blackish creature making its way slowly along a hedgerow - at first we thought it was just a large rabbit, however looking through the binoculars we could see it was a young badger.

 

I was really excited as although I had seen badgers before, they were only fleeting glimpses of animals in our car headlights along the country lanes at night, and this was my first ever time seeing one in good light as the sun was only just setting. We watched it as it dug for worms for a good 20 minutes or so, whilst it was only about 30 metres from us. Eventually, the badger sloped off into a nearby hedgerow and we returned to tell everyone about our remarkable encounter. 

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I never thought I would see the badger again, as we had been living in the area for several years and had never found signs of a sett in that area and so we thought that the individual we saw must have just been a wandering juvenile. However, 2 years later during the summer of 2022, I did indeed locate a sett in the area which I hadn't known about before, reasonably close to where we had originally seen the badger in 2020. I spent several evenings out there in August 2022 but despite plenty of sightings, I failed to get a decent shot of the badgers - they mainly came out once the light had long gone. I will try again next spring and summer, so watch this space!

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In the meantime, here a couple photos from the wonderful moment we experienced in June 2020.

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