Badger cub, at Badger Manor!!! 1st March 2026

Yes folks, your eyes do not deceive you. A badger cub made an appearance out of the main sett entrance at Badger Manor. Cubs aren't normally seen until about late April of early May. For some reason, and we mustn't anthromoporphise her behaviour, our sow decided to give her cub an airing.

Here is our cub as viewed from the front of the sett.

And here it is as viewed from the rear of the sett.

In this image, we see that the cub is already forming stripes on its head. This points to the cub being born quite early in the year - perhaps sometime in January. Apart from one cold snap, the weather has been very mild this winter.

I thought for one moment that the sow was transferring her cub or cubs to another sett. They do this sometimes. But no! She returned her cub to the chamber on the right.

The appearance of the cub over shadowed this visitor. A Sparrowhawk to the right of the main sett entrance, next to the roof hole. I have no idea how this Sparrowhawk managed to get here, as this area is under cover of trees, and the only way in is narrow with lots of branches to impede the hawk's way. I also do not know if it has a kill. I did not see any feathers when I swapped SD cards around.

Strangely enough, I did return on Monday morning (23rd) to set the time correctly on my GardePro trail cam. It was 12 hours out. I also too the opportunity to rotate the trail cam which took the Sparrowhawk footage up a bit. I felt it was pointing too low. The Sparrowhawk would not have been in this footage had I rotated the trail cam earlier!

Keeping with the area right of the main sett entrance. We have a badger, possibly a boar, having an investigate of the roof in the hole. I have this suspicion that there might be a interloping badger investigating Badger Manor.

Soon after investigating the roof hole, a badger squeezes itself into it, which is why I think it is a boar.

And another entry. It is possible that the hole is now a little bigger, or this badger has worked out how to get into this hole, but in either case, it simply slides in.

I think this is a sow.

To set the scene. I've suspected for a while that there may be one or two other badgers sniffing around Badger Manor. I'm not entirely convinced as I haven't made the effort to study our badgers to try and tell them apart.

As I was reviewing photos of last week's happenings, I noticed that something had hurtled out of the badger sett, coming from the direction of the entrances to the left of the main entrance. Note, this happened well after out sow swung her cub around.

Here is a photo, the only one of three, to get a shape hurtling out of the sett area. I cannot tell for sure whether this creature is a fox (because of the long tail) or badger - a fast moving creature will cause certain body parts to appear longer than they are due to their fast movement in the time to take a photo i.e. the exposure time.

Five to six seconds later, another badger hurtles out of the main sett area, possibly in hot pursuit.

About a minute later, our badger returns, though clearly agitated.

However, the badger remains agitated. Here it rushes into the main sett area, but then rushes out as if to take on an interloper who had called it a rude name.

This went on for a bit, but the badger seems to have calmed down, and all appears normal at Badger Manor.

Roll on the excitement for next week. Weather wise, it should be drier and warmer. Last week was foul on occasions, very strong winds at one point, and heavy rain to add to our misery. There was heavy squalls early this morning, but only the lightest of rain since 4:00am.