Badgers

With its characteristic black and white-striped face, grey fur and short furry tail, the badger looks like no other UK mammal. Stocky, powerfully-built creatures, they typically weigh 10–12kg, with a body length of about 90cm. This makes them the biggest land predator in the UK. Badgers are very sociable and playful, living in large family groups known as clans.  One male badger (boar) is dominant and defends the territory against other badgers, they often show visible scars from fighting. Usually each clan has only one or two sows that breed and each sow has just two or three cubs.

They inhabit an extensive burrow system called a “sett” for many generations, emerging at dusk to feed. They are really sociable and playful and live together in family groups, known as clans. There may be around six badgers in each clan that share the same territory. Their boundaries are marked by a series of toilets, known as latrines, which help them avoid conflict with other badger clans.

Although badgers mate at any time of the year cubs are usually born around February. They are born blind but already have their black and white stripes. The cubs stay underground in a chamber lined with dry vegetation for bedding for the first two months of their life.  When they first venture above ground in April they stay close to their mother and she is very protective of them. She will carry them back into the sett by the scruff of the neck if she thinks there is danger. Later she takes them around their territory, so they can learn the best places for food.

They grow rapidly and by winter they are almost as big as the adults and able to find their own food. Sadly many cubs die in their first year, particularly when there is a shortage of earthworms for food during a dry spell.

Sometimes a badger mother is killed on the road when her cubs still need to suckle. If anyone finds a dead sow who is producing milk they should immediately contact a nearby badger group with its exact location. They can then trace the sett and try to help the orphaned cubs.

What do badgers eat?

Badgers are omnivores, which means they will eat a wide range of food. Around 80% of a badger’s diet is made up of earthworms – they can eat hundreds of them in a single night – but they also eat slugs and other invertebrates. Fruit features in the badger’s diet too, including pears, apples, plums and elderberries. Elder bushes can often be found growing near badger setts. When earthworms are scarce, badgers will eat small mammals like voles and rabbits. They are also the main predator of hedgehogs in the UK. Badgers locate food using their keen sense of smell and sharp claws that are ideal for digging.

How to identify a badger sett.

Badgers are surprisingly widespread and they have a fantastic ability to live under people’s noses and yet remain out of sight. Here are some tips on how to identify where badgers are living.

Badgers are woodland creatures, but as the main food of the badger is the earthworm, and the best place to catch earthworms is on short grass (ideally grass that has been grazed by livestock), a badgers favourite location would be in woodland that borders grassy fields. They live in the wood which gives them shelter and security and they can feed in the fields.

Not all woodlands are good for badgers though, they live underground, so they need somewhere suitable for digging. Damp, marshy ground is definitely out and anywhere that is liable to flood (such as river valleys) is usually avoided. They prefer the nice, dry sandy soil, but they also seem quite happy in clay. Badgers definitely seem to prefer a sloping site rather than a very flat one. This might be the slope of a hill, the side of a disused quarry or even a large hedgerow bank. They like anywhere where they can tunnel in sideways rather than straight down. I suppose that it is easier to dig, easier to shift the soil, better drained and presumably easier for them to walk out of a horizontal hole rather than climb out of a vertical one.

Badgers will cover a territory with a radius of 300-500m from their sett. This means that there will often be many signs of badgers in the general area of the sett. Badgers are creatures of habit and leave some regular indications of their presence.

If you’re walking through pasture fields, keep a lookout for badger paths, snuffle holes and dung pits. Badgers travel on paths whenever possible and over time these paths can be quite pronounced. Badger paths are an absolutely classic sign of an active sett.  Badgers are well-known to be creatures of habit, and will follow the same route night after night and even generation after generation until the vegetation is worn away and quite deep paths are formed.  Badger paths are not visual paths, but scent paths as badgers have poor eyesight, but a very good sense of smell.  The badger ‘sees’ the world as a landscape of scents and smells which makes perfect sense for an animal that is active in the hours of darkness.

 Each path carries the scent of the badgers that have used it.  When a badger is following a path, it is literally following the badgers that have gone before.  As a system it is simple and effective – the badger can find its way around a completely dark wood by using these trails, and in times of danger it can always follow them back to the sett.

The trouble with paths is that you never really know who makes them, whether it is badgers or another animal (humans being another obvious cause). If you follow a path, it crosses the field and then goes under a fence, then you know that it cannot have been made by humans, livestock or deer. Other animals such as rabbits will make regular runs, but if you see a deep path like this, start suspecting badgers.

If you ever come across a path under a fence, check the bottom strand of wire to see if any hairs have been caught. This can give you a positive i.d. of the animal that made the path. Badger hairs are grey or black and have a squarish cross section. When you roll a badger hair between your fingers it feels irregular rather than round.

Snuffle holes are the holes made by badgers digging for food. They are a good sign of badger activity, but other animals can leave similar holes and cause confusion. Rabbits will often dig shallow scrapes, but rabbit scrapes are usually oval whilst badger snuffle holes are more conical.

Dung pits are a particular feature of badger territories. Badgers do not deposit their dung just anywhere, they use special pits. Badgers use dung as a territory marker, so you will often find dung pits on badger paths around the edge of their territory. Dung pits look very much like snuffle holes, but with dung in them.

Badger dung is usually a dark greyish-green, which shows that they have been feeding on earthworms. Badgers will cheerfully eat many other things too, so it is always interesting to inspect the dung pits and see what they have been feeding on.

 

Where the territories of two badger clans meet the dung pits can be quite extensive as each side marks its territory.

When looking for signs of a badger sett, remember that badgers prefer a slope, so concentrate on areas of sloping ground, particularly on the outskirts of the wood. The other thing you can do is look for paths and follow them. Sooner or later a path will lead you to a sett. It can be great fun to try to follow paths, as they usually twist and turn through the wood, sometimes clear and obvious, other times fading out altogether. A frustrating but fun way to spend an afternoon.

Depending on the size of the sett there may be anything between a single hole and twenty holes spread over a hundred yards or so. Many animals live in holes, but there are some features of badger setts to look out for.

Badger setts are very extensive underground. Some have up to 300m of tunnels – far more than rabbits or foxes. The badgers have to shift a lot of soil, and this means that badger setts usually have substantial spoil heaps outside. Over time these spoil heaps can literally change the shape of the landscape, creating large shelves or platforms outside the holes. The main sett that I watch is obviously an old one, as the whole area is pock-marked by holes and hummocks so that it resembles a First World War battlefield. Active setts are easy to spot because there will usually be fresh spoil outside. Badgers are compulsive diggers, and although much digging is done in spring before the cubs arrive, they will tend to dig all year round. The spoil heaps will often contain dried grass or bracken that the badgers had dragged in as bedding and then subsequently cleared out at a later date. In my experience this happens when they are preparing an old chamber for re-use, for instance when preparing for cubs.

The actual holes of a badger sett have a characteristic shape, usually referred to as a sideways D. The key feature is that they are broader than they are tall. This makes sense if you think of the shape of a badger – fairly wide and low-slung. Rabbit holes, by contrast, are an oval shape that looks like an O.

 

Active holes will show signs of recent digging, but if you are lucky you can find badger tracks at the entrance to a sett. This is the best evidence you can get that the hole is inhabited by a badger. Note the mass of tracks at this hole, suggesting that a number of badgers are present.

Lastly, have a look around the immediate area of the sett. Badgers will have a main latrine site nearby – like the dung pits on the edge of their territory but larger and more concentrated. At many setts there will be patches of leaf mould that have been dug up and scuffled about as the badgers look for food. There will often also be clear patches where the soil has been worn smooth. These are ‘play areas’ where the badgers congregate, play and groom each other. Sometimes there may be ‘play trees’ – tree stumps or fallen trees that the badgers climb and play over. These are sometimes worn smooth too – the result of whole generations of badgers using them as a playground.

So through a combination of following paths and sensibly interpreting the landscape you will hopefully be able to find the sett and confirm that there are badgers in residence. Look for the right sort of habitat – woodland near pasture, ideally with sloping ground, then look for the peripheral signs of badger activity – paths, dung pits and snuffle holes. Once you’ve confirmed that there are badgers in residence, next step is to try and actually see one of these beautiful creatures.

Badger watching.

Badger society is tightly knit, and watching them socialise before heading out for the night is fascinating. Get to know the family, watching them chat, groom, play, fight, and scratch together!

• Arrive an hour before sunset. Your best views are likely to be at dusk but you need to be motionless long before then.
• Don’t get too close, and try to get above the badgers: even getting just a metre up means your scent is likely to drift up and away. A sett in a bank may give you the opportunity to sit directly above it. Or find a tree you can safely climb.
• Dress in dark clothing made of soft material that doesn’t rustle too much.
• Keep the noise down, don’t use torches or flash photography
• Sit so that the wind is blowing from the sett towards you, not the other way round.
• Cover your hands – these show up vividly in the dark.
• Don’t wear perfume and try not to smell too clean. Some serious badger watchers like Robert Fuller leave their coats by a badger sett for a week.
• Some badger watchers use a torch with a red bulb, which doesn’t alarm them.
• You shouldn’t feed wild badgers – they may become dependent on you – but scattering a few peanuts around the sett before they emerge is usually OK, and it ensures they linger for longer.
• The key to keeping still is to get comfortable – so remember to bring a cushion!
• It’s best to stay for an hour after sunset – when it gets dark you don’t see many badgers.
• April & May is a good time to start watching badgers. The weather is warmer and badgers are beginning to emerge in daylight. Cubs are now a few months old and come above ground to explore around the sett and to play with other badgers.