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Two badgers caught on a camera trap, the secret weapon of any mammal
watcher.
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However, owing to their nocturnal habits and secretive nature, they’re often hard to see in the flesh, more often found dead at the side of the road. Luckily for us though, they leave signs of their presence everywhere and this blog post will be a basic guide about how to find these elusive animals because they’re probably a lot closer to you than you think…
Where to start looking?
Being such adaptable animals, badgers readily colonize a range of habitats, including forests, uplands, meadows, and increasingly urban gardens. Their preferred habitat though is deciduous woodland (a woodland that annually sheds its leaves), with a nearby open green space (e.g. arable fields) which is where they’ll forage for earthworms. Having said that, they’re not that picky, and anywhere
where woodland (or any form of cover) meets open land is the best place to start looking.
First, go directly to where the woodland meets the open area, as this is normally where they’ll prefer to build the bulk of their sett. Look into the trees, for large ‘ant hills’: piles of often sandy-colored earth that have been excavated, known as spoil. They can stand out and be quite large if part of an active sett too.
Make sure to try and be as thorough as possible, walk around as much of the border as you can, scan the trees and scrub for those little humps, it does work too, as the first sett I found was only because I noticed a little pile of sandy earth in some bushes and decided to investigate.
A less-defined path made by a badger, after following this it lead me straight to
the sett. Also, note it's an almost perfect habitat.
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Signs further away from the sett:
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Entrance to a badger sett-badger setts have a D
shaped entrance as shown here.
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The most obvious are completely devoid of any vegetation and usually have the top layer of the earth too, exposing the lighter soil underneath. But lookout for the less-used ones too, where the vegetation has been parted. Generally, badger runs are about 30cm wide
(from my experience) and roughly 30-40cm tall if it's been made through thick vegetation.
This can help separate them from paths made from other animals like deer and foxes, which are often a lot less defined, and much narrower (especially with foxes). Another way to find out is to follow it, especially if it leads into a woodland, as deer ones often stop once they reach cover, but badger ones should end at a sett. Don’t stress out over this too much though, as they’ll often share paths and there are much more reliable signs to look for.
Another path parallel to a sett in the bushes behind
it.
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One of these are tracks, as badgers can travel over 22km foraging in just one night, so it’s a good indicator far away from the sett. Their tracks are medium-sized, with a broad, stout interdigital (middle) pad and long claw marks are often seen. The main way to tell them apart from something like a fox or a cat though is to look at the toes: badgers are the only ones to have five toes, everything else will have four or less (unless it has some sort of mutation but it’ll still look different).
Another sign that can be found quite far from the sett, although not always the most reliable, are the marks left from where the badgers have been foraging. Because so much of their diet is made up of earthworms, they do a lot of digging around, leaving very messy areas
of turned over mud and roots, but sometimes they can be quite distinctive.
Remember, FIVE toes, no more, no
less.
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The badger who did this scat had clearly eaten
a lot of worms.
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Getting closer…
The closer you get to a badger sett, the more of these signs you’ll start to see, and the more concentrated they’ll get. One of these signs is badger fur, which can be found a little way away from the sett, but a lot of the time it’ll be within a few hundred meters if not closer.
A classic little foraging sign made
by a badger-note the shape of it
and how it matches the shape
of a badger's nose.
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Some typical fur from a badgers back, although you
probably won't find this much on one fence.
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Is the sett active or not?
Assuming you’ve found the sett, you might wonder if there are actually badgers using it, because a surprising amount of the time badger setts will be found vacated, for whatever reason. There are lots of things to look for here that tell you this, although I’ll only mention some.
The first and probably the one that most tells you it’s inactive is how clean it is since an active badger sett will have a nice wide, open entrance, clear of any vegetation. However, if you find a badger sett with plants growing in front of it or inside it, it shows you it hasn't been used in a while.
Now, something to look for in an active badger sett is bedding. Being the germaphobes that they are, (not really, otherwise they
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Some typical bedding left on the spoil infront of a
badger sett entrance.
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A nice sized badger sett entrance, notice there's
nothing obstructing it, and part of a run to the left
leading into it.
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Although they are clean animals, badgers do (like all of us) smell pretty bad sometimes, and sometimes when around a sett entrance for long enough, you’ll get the old and quite musty smell of a badger. The good thing is it’s very distinctive from the smell of foxes, which smell bizarrely similar to someone smoking weed.
Badger, Fox, or Rabbit?
Badgers, rabbits, and foxes all live in underground tunnel systems, and sometimes even share one, like one I found that had both foxes and badgers bunking together. But more often than not, they’ll have their own designated ones.
Out of the three, badgers usually have the biggest entrances, being such large animals,
Always follow the paths and you will be rewarded. |
Rabbit warrens, on the other hand, can be a similar shape and size to badger’s sett and can have a large spoil heap in front of them too. Usually, though the best way to tell if it’s the entrance to a rabbit warren is to look inside, a badger sett will stay consistently large and go straight down, whereas a rabbit warren will often get narrower straight away, or steer off to the right or left.
Hopefully, this was useful and happy badger hunting!
This is really helpful! I'm going to look for badgers soon and I'll use this as a guide. Thanks for sharing the information:)
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome! Glad it's useful.
DeleteGood stuff, love these blogs.
ReplyDeleteOh great, thankyou! Don't you worry, every Monday there'll be a new one up, already working on this Mondays one.
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