I was lucky enough tonight to be invited to set up my hide and wait for the family of Badgers that nightly visit a garden on the edge of the Exeter. Arriving at around 7.45 I set up in the porch of the cottage and waited for the arrivals. I hadn’t been there long when a Jay came down to grab a peanut. He was really wary and didn’t hang around to pose nicely but it was great to see this bird. I don’t often see them close up.
After about an hour of waiting patiently and very quiet, hardly daring to move there was some movement in the bushes to my left and I guessed straight away that it was no Badger but a big dog fox.He was about to start tucking in to the peanuts but then he detected that something was not quite right and had legged it before I could even get a snap of him. In a way this was good because it meant that I could adjust the camera properly for when the main “act” arrived….. if it was going to!
So the hour turned in to nearly 2 and I was getting just a tad fed up and beginning to believe that the Badgers were not going to show and I had been rumbled. But then at around 9.25 a snout appeared and the sound of sniffling and snorting accompanied the badger as it nosed in to view from behind the bushes to my left. It got stuck straigh into the free offerings. Here is the sequence as it unfolded.




I am pretty sure that this is a sow and that you can see teats in the photos. This may explain why she is eager to feed and risk being out in the open and at risk. She probably really needs the protein if she is a feeding mother. After around 10 minutes or so and with the time getting on I emerged from the hide and she didn’t immediately run for cover as I would have expected but stood up and had a good look at me before moving off from the direction that she had come. What a great experience and one that I will repeat I hope. I have deliberately not disclosed the location at the request of the home owner who does not want any harm to come to her precious nightly visitors.