Badger digs an OTT mega trench. 20th October 2025

A badger which was sniffing around the main sett and had a brief dig at it has returned with a vengeance this week. It had a major, mega, OTT bit of excavation. Quite impressive.  Only time will tell if the badger remains and sets up home in this sett.  I've seen this behaviour before: badger engages in major excavations then decides not to stay.

Anyway, we kick off with two videos showing major trench excavations. One video viewing the side and one the front of the sett.

I'm not too sure how far into the ground the sett complex goes. The issue is that my trail cam facing the sett entrance had almost exhausted any charge on its batteries. Instead of taking 20 second videos then resting 30 seconds before repeating, it had sufficient charge to take between 5 and 10 second videos.

I get tantalising hints that the badger is going deeper into this sett than the videos show i.e. its tail can just be seen but then footage ends before the tail either disappears further into the sett or the badger exits the sett.

This sequence suggests the badger went deeper into the sett before reversing out with soil. Then the trail cam slept for 30 seconds before taking another video. The issue is, the badger could have reversed out then gone back in again during those 30 seconds of sleep. However, I feel the badger did get further into the sett, had a dig and is shown reversing out with spoil in the second video.

Why is this important? Well, if the badger can't get a long way into the sett it suggests a cave in. Which then offers a possible reason why the previous residents (Itchy and Scrawny tail) left.

These next two videos suggest that either the video went a long way into the sett complex when it turned left or that it lurked for a time in the sett rather than excavating it. There's a four minute gap between seeing the badger go in and then come out.

My only slight concern in saying the badger was in the sett for a long time is that I can't ever recall Itchy or Scrawny tail turning left on entering the sett. They always turned right - though my memory may be playing tricks.

Anyway, the good news is I replaced the batteries in the trail cam and set its timestamp correctly - it lagged by one day and twelve hours. Oh, in case you are puzzling about the video file count not increasing by 1 - I set my trail cam up to take three photos and then a video. Normally time from the camera triggering to taking a photo is faster than the time from triggering to taking a video. The discrepancy can be as much as two seconds - more than sufficient time for an animal to get out of shot.