Badgers in the Garden
In December, the bottom of the garden flooded, so we finally had to move the chickens to new quarters further up the garden. In February, the old chicken run was converted into a wildlife garden. In March, we finally got around to setting up the trail cam in the hope of filming some of the local wildlife - now we have badgers!
With the help of a battery powered Trail Camera
(these have dropped greatly in price, with models, such as ours, available from under £75) we are able to leave it running and capture footage through the night, thanks to the infra red. These little cameras are amazing and make wildlife filming something we can all afford to do without even incurring the costs of leaving home!
How to attract badgers - leave out some peanuts! The very first night we left out peanuts, our first badger arrived. Prior to this, they had no access to this part of the garden, as it had been fenced off for the hens.
As you know, we have several ecoarts sculptures in the garden, so the badger had to go and investigate. I don't think it quite knew what to do but I can't help but wonder if it recognised the sculpture as a badger!
At first the badger was curious about the camera, as it shines a little blue light when the sensors are triggered and clicks as it begins filming in infra red. Very quickly, our garden badger seemed completely at ease with the gadget until, at one point, he (or she) lay down and fell asleep watching it!
Over the coming week, our badger decided it was safe enough to bring along a friend to share the peanuts that get sat on top of the tree stump and scattered around it on the ground. We got very excited by this and the thought crossed our minds that this could be a pair that may just return with babies in tow at some point in the not too distant future.
Within about a week, word had spread of the tasty peanut treats available in Frugaldom's cottage wildlife garden and we were delighted when we reviewed the footage and discovered that a third badger had arrived! This was more than we had dreamed of seeing and had me wondering how many badgers live in a sett - or a holt. I've now nicknamed this corner of our garden 'Badgers Halt'! This was the week they began attempting to dig under the shed, so rocks had to be scattered around it to try and prevent them from tunnelling underneath it. This seemed to work, but then...
The next day, after reviewing what the camera had captured during the previous night, we were shocked to see a fourth badger happily munching away on the peanuts. Never had we expected anything like this - we seem to have attracted an entire family of them. The original visitor is there every night, almost every hour from dusk until well into the night and then returns before dawn. They all seem to be most active at dusk, but this may be because the peanuts are all gone by morning.
And then last night, to round off the month of March and take us through to April, we were introduced to our 5th badger of the group, so I had to go and do some more reading. According to the information about badgers on the Wildlife Trust web site, there can be up to 14 badgers living in the one sett, so I think we're going to need a whole load more peanuts!
These are very entertaining creatures but they are also very boisterous, with a tendency to run at one another, head-butting and body slamming. I will try to upload some of the video clips to our Frugaldom YouTube channel so you can share their antics.
www.frugaldom.com
Okay, that is the coolest thing ever! SO lucky to see them on camera like that!
ReplyDeleteWe are very lucky to be able to see them like this, so we are taking as many photos as possible. I will try to share as many as possible - there are more on the Frugaldom page of Facebook. :)
DeleteThanks I will go look!
ReplyDelete