There is something magical about badgers
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
I HAVE been feeding badgers in the garden by using peanuts and an increasing number of readers have shared their own experiences over such ventures.
Indeed that is how I came to find out that the badgers will take no notice of the flash on a camera.
I had strictly avoided using flash in the mistaken belief it would frighten badgers until a reader told me otherwise.
Up until recently I had not seen
any of the badgers as they had arrived well after dark and I was in bed, but for the last week or so with darker nights because of weather and change in time they have been coming in earlier.
To say that seeing a badger feeding only about 10 feet away from you is one of the pleasures of the day is a massive understatement, as many readers will know.
The photograph is one I took in available light last week and shows the massive feet and claws.
There is just something magical about a badger that I can never explain, but part of it must be the mystery surrounding them as they are nocturnal in their habits.
One of the problems I find with the badgers coming in is the difficulty in identifying individual animals as most of them look the same. You are supposed to, according to the books, to be able to tell a sow in milk but I have yet to see one.
The end result over this quandary is that I really have no idea just how many badgers are coming in each night. The fact that I can identify one or two individuals does not help over the numbers that may, or may not, be involved.
The books say you can tell by the various patterns of black and white hairs on the head and face but this has not helped me as I cannot really see any difference between them. I have even compared photographs but still cannot see any variation.
There have been a small number of exceptions and the first, about two years ago, was the one I call longtail – and it was there last night. The reason for the name is that it has an unusually long tail and it is silvery white and very conspicuous. It is a very dominant badger and if there is only one up on the old trees stump after the peanuts it will be longtail.
The is another I just call "the big one" as it is just huge compared with the rest of them.
They were the only ones I could identify until a few nights ago when a different badger turned up and there, on the top of its back, was a large long patch of white hairs contrasting with the usually greyish colour.
So that is the three I can identify. They were never there at the same time so there was obviously more than three badgers coming to the free food.
Then three nights ago I looked out and there were five badgers all at once.
The problem was that with five badgers and one pile of peanuts on the stump there was some disagreement going on.
So I decided to split the feed sites and also spread the peanuts around. Last night when I first looked there were two badgers in at the two different sites and a small pile of sliced apples at each which, as usual, the badgers were ignoring. I guessed roe deer were taking the apples late in the night as they were always gone next morning.
Then suddenly a roe doe trotted round a shed and made for the food. The badgers just fled and I have never seen badgers move so fast.
But as the doe fed on peanuts, not apples, longtail came in from a different direction and as I left the roe and longtail’s heads were inches away from each other, tucking in to peanuts. Just marvellous!
