Eurasian Badger Meles meles

2 June 2006
Around 20.45 I came across several wildlife trails in an area where in the past a badger sett was located. While looking for recent signs of badger presence I suddenly heard the sound of bracking branches right behind me. I slowly turned around and to my great surprise I saw two badgers comming towards me. I gently grabbed my camera to take a picture. Unfortunalty the shutter makes quite some noise so I expected the animals to run off. The opposite happened. No disturbence at all and both of them kept on digging and looking around for food without paying attention to my presence. Meanwhile a third animal entered the scene. There was no wind that evening what contributed to the fact that the badgers did not smell me at this point. One of the animals approached me untill it was less then one meter away. At that moment it froze, it had smelled me and I was noticed. It turned around, raised its tail and started puffing. Then it went into a nearby hole to stay there untill I would leave. So that's what I did and I decided to return later that week to see how many individuals were using this set.

7 July 2006
A beautifull evening for taking a look at the number of inhabitants of our local badger sett. I arrived around 8 o'clock, enough time to find me a perfect spot from where I could oversee the area without bothering the animals. I put myself underneath a comfortable pine tree and started to wait. At 20.47 the first animal appeared from the den, soon followed by the second and third. Crawling through the bramble they were lookig for something to eat. All of a sudden I noticed a lot of movement going on just behind a hill were I expected the main entrance to be located. I quickely counted, 1..2..3...4. Another 4 animals including to mature individuals. The young animals were running, playing and biting each other. Sometimes you could hear them make soft playfull screams. It was really fun to see these animals just doing their thing, a hundred times better than watching Animal Planet, I can tell you that! Untill now this set contains 7 animals including 5 juveniles.

12 June 2006
After returning from a call regarding a pine marten sighting we encountered a badger which was feeding on a short grass patch. Because it was quite far from our local badger sett I planned to look for more activities and signs the following saturday evening.


Print of red fox


Typical badger prints found along a potato field

15 July 2006
As planned I walked around the place where we saw the badger several days before. The Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) was present in large numbers, everywhere you could see and hear this nice yellowish bird. After 15 minutes a red fox crossed my path and was more interested in a nearby rabbit than in me, he did not even see me. Deer was crushing through the forest when I past but still no sign of badger. Comming out of the forest I entered a potato field and I walked back along the edges of it towards my bike. Here I found many tracks of wildlife; deer, fox and also the typical prints of badger. All of a sudden an enormous male deer jumped out of the high vegetation and ran off into the forest. It barked at my so I barked back and on its turn it answered and probably thought that I was some kind of a rival. I am still not sure if the badger we saw earlier that week was one of the local sett so another visit to this area is not a bad idea.

Januari 2007

February 2007