Wildlife Observation Camera
May / June 2021
The late summer didn’t really happen so well with the camera after some problems with an SD card, me learning how to spot active tunnel entrances to a badger sett (which I got soooo wrong on soooo many occasions) and the complete busyness of work in the gardens, but thankfully there were still some great insights captured into some habits of our wildlife residents.
One wonderful discovery is that rabbits will cohabit in badger sett. I wasn’t sure what to believe when I’m seeing video of a rabbit walking into a badger tunnel and not coming out, but after some reading it became apparent that it’s really a thing. There’s also many instances where rabbit is seen hanging around the entrance.
Apparently, a fox will also make the same arrangement with a badger sett, but the relationship can get a little more complicated because a fox may leave food scents / scraps around, and since the badgers aren’t so keen on this sort of untidy behaviour they'll forcibly evict the lodging fox!
House Cleaning for Badgers
Another wonderful behaviour of badgers that I’d not known about is how they clean their living chambers in the sett. In Spring and summer, they bring all their grass bedding outside to air it in the sun before collecting it when it’s dry or (I guess) it smells better! There’s some great video of this happening just at the entrance to one of the tunnels. Very cool to see.
And while I'm reading about all these behaviours I was fascinated to read that badgers will arch their backs to completely fill a tunnel with its body when it’s walking through it. Since all tunnels are interconnected, this action drags fresh, clean air into the tunnel system. The more I read about badgers, the more I understand the average badger really prefers things to be very, very tidy at home!