A badger returns

On Thursday 11th June 2025 the Memsahib and I set out late for our walk. As school run was approaching its end, we decided to turn left instead of right after our little mid-walk break. This route takes us past our sett. Ever hopeful, I took a look at the sett area just in case a badger had returned.

We were rather excited to see extensive amounts of disturbed earth extending out from the sett entrance. I swapped SD cards this morning, as per my usual routine of leaving the trail cams running for a week. I found a badger not only digging the sett but also dragging lots and lots of bedding material.

Closer inspection of the badger seems to indicate that it is neither Itchy or Scrawny tail.  It is too lithe and has too thin a tail to be Itchy, plus it doesn't scratch itself a lot. It is too heavy set plus has a neat, long thin tail to be Scrawny tail. So it looks like a new badger.

It brought in vast amounts of bedding, but not to our main sett. It took it further up the hill, along the path. Now, I have seen a badger take bedding along this route, but I haven't found the sett yet. I did have a look once, but it was fairly impenetrable, plus the sett holes I did see look very old and unused. Hmm, a mystery to solve - out with my bill hook for a bit of path clearing.

Another mystery is why it involved itself in very extensive excavations of our main sett, but didn't seem to take up residence. I have no videos of it entering or exiting this entrance after its excavations. This situation was not helped by the trail cam facing the sett ran out of battery charge the day I swapped cards. Sheesh. New batteries were inserted this morning.

On with the show
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Finally able to catch up with postings. I've been somewhat busy.

After all this hard work, the badger never entered this entrance again!!! I think I have a video of it poking its nose into the entrance hole for less than a second, then shooting off. Very strange.