If anyone can steer you within range of the elusive badger, or Meles meles, it is Natural England warden David Thurlow. Guardian of the nature reserves of Ebbor Gorge and Rodney Stoke in the Mendip Hills, he knows every cranny and cave of this delectable slice of North Somerset.
Morning, noon and night, Thurlow immerses himself in the habits and habitats of wild creatures, including nocturnal beings such as bats, otters and badgers. Most of us would love to see these animals, but are resigned to viewing them only on film. Our problem is our status as humans – large, noisy, diurnal, strange-smelling and generally unwelcome in the animal kingdom.
I’d always longed to get a proper, unhurried look at a badger, one of the UK’s largest, most common and yet least-observed native mammals. Old Brock himself, lord of the underworld, is as big as a mastiff, with bone-crushing jaws and earth-moving paws, a builder of vast subways under fields and forests. Now it looked as though my small dream to see him might come true.
Badger-watching hints from the experts
1 Look for a sett with signs of activity – bedding hauled out, tunnel mouths polished by body contact, coarse grey hairs on tree trunks and other scratching posts.
2 Ask the landowner’s permission to watch the badgers.
3 Wear subdued colours, such as brown or green – something that blends in with the background. Camouflage is excellent because it breaks up your silhouette. Choose a warm fabric that doesn’t rustle.
4 Bring binoculars (8x40 is a good magnification), insect repellent and something to sit on.
5 Keep low, slow and silent as you approach the sett.
6 Get in position – about 20 yards away and downwind – by 8pm.
7 Sit or lie low, so your silhouette doesn’t bulk on the skyline.
8 Get comfortable and be patient; badgers don’t watch the clock.
At 7pm, our group of four set off from the Rodney Stoke Inn – myself, my wife Jane, Thurlow, and volunteer warden Rod Hoskins. In Thurlow’s Land Rover we jolted up an old cart track to the top of the hill. “In general,” Hoskins told us, “you’d expect badgers to be coming out of their setts around 8 o’clock in the evening, pretty much all year round. They’ll clean themselves, have a stretch and a scratch, and then go hunting for worms or beetles or whatever they can find. In the winter they’re a bit dopey – though they don’t hibernate, contrary to what most people think. But in summer, this time of year, the cubs will be wanting to play.”
The first spot we tried was top of Thurlow’s list, but the wind was all wrong for it. His back-up place, down the slope and across an unmown hayfield, proved absolutely perfect. The four of us crept through the grass and into the skirt of the wood about 30ft downwind of the sett, positioned ourselves around a log as low to the ground as possible, and settled down in silence to watch and wait.
After a few minutes, a gentle nudge and motion of the head from Hoskins drew my attention to the shadows under the trees, just beyond the nearest tunnels. Something large and dark was moving rhythmically there. At first it was hard to see what was happening in the thickening twilight, but then the shape detached itself from the trees and moved into the open. A big badger cub a few months old was stretching and yawning after enjoying a luxurious scratch on a tree stump. It had a grey body 2ft long with humped shoulders, a dramatically striped mask of black and white, and a surprisingly long and thick tail.
All of a sudden the badger was flat on the ground with another cub on top of it – a sibling had sprung out from its ambush in a flying leap. They rolled over, snarling and grinning and kicking, play-fighting like hyped-up teenagers. Then two more appeared in the clearing to join the melée. It was strangely moving – so similar to what one had seen one’s own children do, yet capable of being broken and dispersed by the slightest cough or rustle on the spectator’s part.
There was a flicker of movement much closer to us, and two female badgers came cautiously out of a tunnel mouth some 30ft away. They snuffled closer and closer, sweeping their snouts sideways across the earth in search of food, an older sow and a younger one, looking up every now and then to assess our alien shapes for any sign of threat. Unable to see us clearly or smell us, they were wary, but more intent on their feeding than on our group.
To have those vivid black and white faces almost close enough to touch was magical. Jane and I would have stayed transfixed all night, but after half an hour the badger party broke up. The females wended their ways, while the youngsters went crashing off in single file to see what they could find to eat in the now darkened wood.
We got up slowly and went out across the field, startling grazing roe deer as we made our way back to the Land Rover, stretching and scratching and grinning at one another like a troupe of awakening badgers.
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The details
Natural England (0845 600 3078
); Badgers by Michael Clark (Whittet Books) is an excellent guide
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Help and advice
The Wildlife Trusts (01636 677711
) oversees 47 local trusts across the UK, Isle of Man and Alderney. Many of the trusts have badger groups, and all of them should be able to help you locate and watch badgers.The Badger Trust (0845 828 7878
) is another umbrella organisation that can put you in touch with local groups. Scottish Natural Heritage (01463 725000
) organises badger-watching trips across its various regions; see also Countryside Council for Wales (0845 130 6229
), and Northern Ireland Environment Agency (0845 302 0008
).
