Badger eating peanuts at bird feeder station
I've been taking
pictures of badgers for the past few months.
We've had badgers at
the top of the hill for many years,
sometimes seen running across the road at night and roadkill once or twice in 25 years.
I spotted a badger
in the car headlights on the house drive in autumn last year. I got an
impression of the tail end before It disappeared. It happened so quickly that I
wasn't 100% sure of what I'd seen. Then a few weeks later I saw it again,
definitely a badger.
Badger (infrared)
In January I set up
a trail camera (approx £70 "Crenova" from Amazon) and was soon taking
night time infrared photos of a badger in all parts of the garden.
On the drying green
There are at
least two badgers visiting, possibly three, with least one just about every
night. The trail camera gives a faint red flash when taking a picture. The
badgers aren't too perturbed, but they did investigate the camera when it was
first set up - I've got a few over-exposed super-close-ups of badger whiskers.
The badgers eat any
left-over bird food under the bird feeders. In the evening I scatter extra
peanuts on the ground under one of the feeders about 3m from the living room
windows. These peanuts get eaten overnight.
A puzzle: the
badgers spend long periods under the ivy at the front of the house, sometimes
only their backends are visible, and other times they go fully underneath. The
badgers are more-or-less motionless for perhaps half an hour at a time before
moving on. I have a mental picture of their
mouths open waiting for a mouse to run across the mousetrap. Badgers have
serious teeth. What are they really doing in the ivy?
Badger emerging from ivy
The badgers tolerate
noises from general household clattering and living room lights. Last night I
opened an upstairs window and took a few pictures of a badger eating peanuts -
telephoto with flash.