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re on the evening when i returned willow the badger cub to the wild see willow goes wild i ended up watching badgers adults yearlings and cubs for over an hour starting from about 8 35pm for the most part my observations were of badgers eating peanuts like those in the photo below view on flick along with a second pic but i also saw one of the adults doing what brock does best digging badgers are of course built for burrowing and are sometimes referred to as nature s digging machines with their powerful forelimbs armed with long strong claws they dig for food and of course they excavate large underground tunnel systems for shelter and protection the setts with which we are so familiar locally most badger setts are dug in sandy soil see about our local badgers on the brockwatch website of which we have two types glacial sand deposits and northampton sandstone the ironstone on which corby s steel industry was based although sandy soils have their advantages being well drained the northampton sandstone strata also presents challenges for burrowing badgers beneath the surface layer of soil is the sandstone itself a layer of rock which has provided a popular local building material over the centuries and which is still quarried for that purpose today while we humans have machinery to extract sandstone badgers have only paws and claws but as you can see from the photo above which i took in june 1984 brock is more than up to the challenge evidence of the subterranean labours of these semi fossorial beasts can be found on the heaps of earth outside their sett entrances chunks of sandstone rock scored by the claws of the badgers who scratched them loose and dragged them up to the surface those in the photo below view on flickr which i snapped yesterday while i was carrying out a sett check were lying outside a new sett entrance dug since my last visit to the sett in question earlier this year yesterday s checks also took me to two setts in a local wood both of which i have known for more than two decades but only watched for the first time earlier this year at conifer sett see two nights to remember and one to forget i noted that evidence of badger activity seemed to be concentrated on a nucleus of about four holes in the middle of the sett not far from these entrances i saw several examples of an unmistakeable fungus the decidedly rude looking stinkhorn phallus impudicus there appears to be an association between this fungus and badger setts likely the result of flies which feed on the stinkhorn s foetid slime and then excrete the ingested spores close to another source of food the bodies of dead badgers which have died underground as you can see from my photo view on flickr the stinkhorns i saw yesterday were shall we say past their prime over at beech tree sett see some enchanted evening and a week in the life part 1 one of the residents had clearly been hard at work load after load of sandy soil had been brought out of the main entrance hole and dragging up onto the already massive spoil heap along the same route each time in this way the badger had created a deep groove or furrow which you can see in the photo below the same animal or one of their sett mates had also gathered some bedding material leaving a bundle of vegetation in the channel worn into the huge platform of soil the excavation of a sett appears to be a task which is never fully completed even at the largest setts created by many generations of badgers the tunnel entrances will often be found with piles of freshly hewn material on their spoil heaps it seems that badgers just love to dig and will do so even when their efforts produce little real benefit for example one of the adult badgers who i watched on saturday evening suddenly decided after spending a while munching peanuts with the rest of clan that a spot of home improvement was in order i watched him over the course of half an hour or more reversing out of one particular hole in the middle of the sett in a series of jerky movements dragging his rake like claws along the ground in an attempt to remove yet more soil from below the surface however the ground was so hard that his hard work was in vain he emerged twenty to thirty times from the sett entrance bringing out pitifully small quantities of earth but remained utterly undeterred and carried on regardless posted in about badgers badger watching sett checking 1 comment the agony and the ecstasy posted on july 23 2010 by brockwatcher brockwatcher s beginnings part 4 after yesterday s instalment of words and pictures relating to my beginnings as a brockwatcher today i continue the story with more memories of the delights of watching badgers and of my first direct experience of the suffering caused by snares within two years of my first observations of badgers at the sett i discovered in 1978 i was attempting to take photographs of them my initial efforts did not produce very good results but things changed in august 1980 after investing in better equipment and film i finally obtained pictures i was happy with starting with the image above which i regard as my first decent photograph of a badger view on flickr i discovered very early on that the way to a badger s heart is through his stomach placing food outside the sett entrances greatly improved the chances of seeing and taking photos of badgers especially cubs back then the food on offer was in the form of dog biscuits which i had soaked in warm water with honey this worked like a charm although if scattered by hand it did leave me with sticky fingers not ideal when handling a camera eventually the advantages of sultanas or raisins became apparent and later i started using peanuts in addition to or instead of these tasty treats the photo below was taken during the transition from dog biscuits to raisins i learned a couple of interesting things about badger cubs during the course of the june evening on which i took this photograph view on flickr first i could get very close to them either because they couldn t see me due to very poor vision or because the lure of the food overcame their fear of the strange shape kneeling on the ground just two or three metres away from them and second when it comes to food badgers do not believe in share and share alike it is more a case of every cub for himself which is exactly what is being demonstrated in the photo the cub on the right of the picture sensing that one of his playmates is behind him and that his breakfast is therefore at risk has plonked his rear end in the second cub s way in an attempt to block his exit from the sett entrance this ploy was unsuccessful and biscuits and raisins were soon being shared then a third cub attempted to join the feast only to find two badgers bums in the way the obstacle was of course overcome but cub number four arrived shortly afterwards and was faced with the challenge of a three bum barrier by the time all four cubs were out cub number one had gotten much closer to me and either detected my presence for the first time or simply felt that we were now too close for comfort he decided to retreat into the safety of the sett but to do this he had to climb over the other three who were busy eating and blissfully unaware of or just ignoring me once back inside the tunnel cub number one forgot all about me and remembered the food at which point he found out what it was like to be cub number four right at the back of the queue with three other cubs all determined to keep him there and so the badger merry go round went on as cub number two took fright and scrambled over the others to get into the sett i was often accompanied on my watches and photographic evenings at the sett by my younger brother robert who can be seen in the photo below offering food to one of the badger cubs during 1982 when i took some of the best of my early photos see for example brockwatcher s beginnings we noticed that one of the badgers had distinctively reddish cheeks and possibly something dangling from the neck one night the reason for these features finally became clear and it was robert who took the photograph which confirmed this the photograph in question can be seen in the newspaper clipping dated 16 july 1982 which forms the masthead for this blog post if viewed as standalone article it depicts our badger with a snare around his neck with the help of rorke garfield from the national animal rescue association this animal was eventually caught and taken to a veterinary surgery for treatment only to die on the operating table post mortem examination showed that he had septicaemia the wound where the brass rabbit snare had cut into his neck was healing over the wire in some places and abscessing in others the tightness of the noose had fractured the badger s oesophagus and restricted his windpipe death must have come as a blessed relief from agonising and prolonged pain publicity for this horrible incident was arranged to raise awareness of the dangers posed by snares a sign of things to come as within two years i would be issuing press releases for a fledgling badger group when interviewed by my local newspaper i described snares as barbaric a term i still use to characterise these indiscriminate instruments of torture today it should come as no surprise to learn that i abhor snares with a passion and long to see their manufacture and use outlawed this is not just because of my first hand experience in 1982 of the suffering they can cause but also because of the innumerable other cases of badgers otters foxes pets farm animals and other creatures which have been maimed and killed in them in 2002 as a trustee of the national federation of badger groups now badger trust i co authored with chief executive dr elaine king a report the case for a ban on snares which concluded we must come back to our primary concern about snares that in all their forms and however they are used they are indiscriminate and inherently cruel the torture of badgers and other animals that become trapped in snares must be stopped it is the considered opinion of the nfbg that the only way to achieve this is to legislate for a complete ban on the use of all snares in the same year i was part of a delegation which presented a petition calling for a ban on snares bearing 60 000 signatures to 10 downing street alas snares remain legal in britain and badgers along with many other animals continue to suffer and die in them today s announcement by agriculture minister james paice that defra will this autumn launch a consultation on badger culling in england brings with it the very real prospect that within a year we will see the start of a badger slaughter in which snares will be used something which the badger trust and other organisations will with your help do their best to prevent there is hope however in scotland which established itself as a leader in animal welfare by being the first country in britain to ban hunting with dogs scotland now has the opportunity to enhance the welfare of its wild and domestic animals still further by banning the use of snares advocates for animals is leading the campaign and will welcome your support whether you are north or south of the border for more information and to discuss the issue of snares visit the badger message board posted in badger persecution badger watching leave a comment brockwatcher s beginnings part 3 posted on july 22 2010 by brockwatcher following on from brockwatcher s beginnings and brockwatcher s beginnings part 2 my involvement in the study and conservation of all kinds of wildlife continued apace in 1978 during regular forays into the countryside close to home i recorded the presence of birds mammals amphibians invertebrates and wildflowers i also went on trips further afield some organised by the daventry natural history society and others by a man who would over the next few years become my mentor donald payne i became a young ornithologists club now rspb wildlife explorers leader in march and later in the year i became involved with raising funds for the world wildlife fund now wwf while all this was going on i was also devoting more of my time to badgers my field notebooks for 1978 include several references to the badger setts which i had found and in a summary of mammal observations i wrote that i knew of over 15 setts in all one of those setts was destined to play a very significant part in my life though you wouldn t guess that from my first written report of it dated february 11th this simply stated that there were signs of activity there over the next three months i must have made further visits and observed more sign of badger activity which led me to conclude that this sett would be a good one to watch i say this because my diary for 1978 after many weeks with no entries has this to say about may 19th rob my youngest brother and i went to try badger watching as we were walking along the ridge we suddenly saw 4 fox cubs which promptly disappeared we managed to watch 2 different ones on and off they were people watching then we went further along close to a sett a badger kept just showing himself a tawny owl flew past within 2 metres of us it landed in a tree nearby then flew off finally we got super views of a badger and glimpses of another badger cubs at sunset photographed at main sett in the early 1980s view on flickr during the remainder of 1978 i watched badgers at my new watching sett another 16 times i usually watched either with my brother robert or with members of the daventry nhs yoc group during the summer we saw the badgers in good daylight observations were very brief some nights but on other occasions we were treated to some marvellous views the night of september 23rd when i took two friends jonathan and john on their first badger watch was particularly memorable the following is based on an account which i wrote in 1979 we arrived at about 7 45pm and settled down behind some gorse bushes close to the most heavily used sett entrances in this position the wind would not blow our scent towards any of the holes we were as quiet as possible which was just as well because on our arrival a badger emerged he was quickly joined by another the two badgers groomed and played for five or ten minutes then they started wandering off downhill we would soon lose sight of them but i decided to risk illuminating them with the torch i had taken to help us find our way back from the sett after dark so i stood up switched on the torch and the badgers didn t take a blind bit of notice we were able to get views of them which were almost as good as those i had enjoyed during the summer then another badger came out of a hole quite close to us but unfortunately he detected us and went back below ground we decided to follow the two badgers who were now moving out of the range of the torch beam so downhill we went quiet as mice or at least we tried to be we listened intently for the badgers who can be quite noi...