Part of our morning walk takes us a long a short section of footpath between a couple of minor roads. The path is heavily wooded, and bound by small schools and farmland.
Over the years, we often see excavations in a bank along onside of the path. The burrows have a wide entrance, fronted by a lot of soil. It is often difficult to ascertain how old the excavations are and whether the burrows are in use.
Although the Memsahib often attributes these burrows to badgers, I've been a bit more skeptical. There are a lot of rabbits in the area. The soil is soft, bordering on sandy, therefore prone to erosion. A small rabbit sized hole can easily be eroded to quite a large hole. The burrow entrances were no more than two or three footsteps from the footpath, making me dubious about them being made by badgers.
Until I saw this...
Lovely, 'fresh' grass and straw scattered outside the front of the hole.
Next morning, we returned with a trail cam, which I set up on the holly tree to the right of this photo. I've been reluctant to put out a trail cam until now due to the lack of cover for the camera from the footpath. Some enterprising oik is bound to steal my trail cam if they spot it. Anyway, apart from it being a little bit painful getting past the holly leaves and briar thorns, this was a perfect spot for a trail cam - if a little close to the sett's entrance.
After a couple of nights out, I retrieved my trail cam to find it wasn't pointing downwards enough. Still, I got this footage of one badger coming out of the sett.
I must admit I a very surprised to see a badger sett so close to a public footpath. Granted, it isn't the most heavily used of paths. In fact it is a rare event for us to encounter anyone on the path on our morning walks. Nevertheless, it is used by pedestrians, cyclists and dogwalkers. Then I read up about badgers and discovered that they do live and dig up setts in close proximity to human habitation - sometimes even in gardens!
My old girl and I are very pleased to have a badger sett; and on our daily morning constitutional to boot.
90% luck, 5% field craft, 5% camera skills.
I took the executive decision to put fresh batteries into my trail cam on Friday afternoon (after my swim) rather than risk Saturday morning. I huffed and puffed my way to where I'd placed my trail cam, all the while keeping an eye on the sky. Rain was forecast for 15:15, which was when I reached my trail cam.
First thing I noticed was that I'd left the thing in Maintenance mode. It would not have taken any photos or videos. I turned it off - always worthwhile trying a cold boot of the camera. Still no joy when I put it into Maintenance mode - crashed immediately, after indicating no battery charge.
Secondly, I was dead suspicious about the batteries lasting a mere three weeks. They were heavy duty Duracells, which should have lasted about two to three months of heavy usage. As I was having a little trouble with the SD card (when I swapped them that morning), I decided to pop the card then push it back in firmly. Turned the machine back on. It burst into life!
Not quite a wasted journey. At least the machine was now in active mode, rather than the Maintenance mode I'd left it in that morning.
I managed to puff my way back home, with the weather doing its best to rain on me - only spitting as I reached our house.
No need to go out on Saturday morning. Wind was high, but not bad. Rain was the problem. We don't like walking in the stuff when it comes at us horizontally. Wimpy, I know.
The usual action took place around the sett. Fox being nosy, but not entering sett. Song thrush and woodpigeon sniffing around. Resident badger making itself at home, and almost demolishing the sett's entrance in the process.
Here's the badger bringing wet bedding into its sett. First from the left. You have to trust me that the beastie is bringing bedding in.
NOTE the correct month and year. Finally!
Pulling leaves, grass, twigs and stuff backwards.
Backing into entrance.
Now from the right.
I think I must have a slow SD card. The badger moves a fair distance between photos. I can only assume that the delay between photos is because it is taking a bit of time to write photos to the SD card.
We're not entirely sure what the badger was up to here. My old lady first thought it was widening the entrance of its sett. But I realised it was having a tussle with its bedding. We might simply have a dozy, uncoordinated badger
Considering how few houses there are within a half mile radius of this sett, it is fascinating to see another cat.
We went for our usual walk on Sunday morning. No trees down, which came as a bit of a surprise. There's normally one or more down across the various footpaths we take. Some, which were felled in earlier storms but not cleared as they were high enough above the paths so as not to block them, were sinking lower across some paths. They normally stay at a precarious angle across a path until either they collapse and block a path or the council send a crew round to cut them down as a precautionary measure. I think earlier storms (e.g. Bert) had knocked down any tree that was due to fall.
What a good job you checked the settings, otherwise we would not have had this! Great footage again Angus, it is interesting to follow them/him? Don't know what was going on at the entrance, maybe having a tidy up, refreshing the hole? Thanks again for your time in giving us this wonderful updates, of which we would never see normally.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
No update this week, unless I post photos from the week before.
I swapped SD cards returned home only to find nothing on it. I suspect all the problems I had with the unit appearing to be out of power, and then having to re-seat the SD card might be symptomatic of the unit dying. I'll check tomorrow morning, and if necessary swap the trail cam for another that I have.
In the meantime, as a sign of things to come, I bought a trail cam for the princely sum of £60. A brief test run in our house seemed to show it was all functioning. It did detect that we have an interloper visiting our house and eating our cat's food. Yep, another cat, which we can't say we've seen before.
Anyway, the new trail cam produces far better images than my Apeman trail cams. I'm not sure why the Apeman trail cams produces such poor quality images and, more annoyingly, why photographs are 4:3 format while videos are wide format. Despite their short comings, my Apeman trail cams have soldered on for a number of years; until now, it appears. Sigh.
I did have a Gardpro some years ago. This produced wonderful images (like my new unit), was lightning fast (0.1 second trigger time, with fast time to photograph and video), but sadly it's night vision failed after 18 months. It has been committed to the great recycling centre in the sky.
I deployed my new trail cam this morning, on the opposite side to my current trail cam.
This is very good, well not for the poor camera that has ended! Look forward to seeing the footage with the new camera.
A whole lot going on at Sett watch HQ. Firstly, something strange going on with my Apeman trail cam and SD card. The thing did capture imagery from the week before i.e. upto WE 14-12-2024. I'm really baffled why I couldn't see it on laptop. It might be due to the SD being a micro card, and wasn't seated in its carrier properly. Anyway, I ended up with a couple of hundred photos and videos.
This week I have imagery from my new cheapo trail cam. It's takes far superior photos and videos to the Apeman. Strangely, it's video quality is higher than it's photo.
The highlight of this past week is a badger fight. I going to try and single step through the video to work out who won the fight. Our resident badger (smaller, and with a smoother face stripe) or the vagrant (passer by, larger with a more crooked face stripe). I hope the former.
First off, video from Apeman trail cam.
Now from new trail cam, which I call Gujon as I can't remember the manufacturer's proper name.