Badgers not seen for 3 1/2 days. 3rd January 2026

I was hoping to bring better news for the first update of 2026. Instead, I have a worrying few days.

A quick update, before a more providing more details later on.

I have not seen any badger since 23:30 on Wednesday 31st December. There are two possible reasons, that are possibly intertwined.

1. 31st December was new years eve. A huge number of very noisy fireworks were set off during the evening of the 31st, reaching a crescendo between 23:00 and 1:00am on the 1st January. The early starters not understand the meaning of fireworks on this date, and the late starters also missing the point a little.

2. We've had a cold snap. New Years eve onward has been particularly cold, with temperatures at our house dropping to -3.3C. It is possible that the badgers, most particularly the sow, have decided to enter a state or torpor i.e. semi-hibernation to both save energy during the cold snap, and possibly being a little concerned about all the noise. The fireworks were generally of the noisy, exploding type.

After reviewing the footage captured last week, and visiting the sett to change the SD card on one trail cam, I can safely say the badgers were frightened by the fireworks. It is possible they have also decided to stay in their sett in a state of torpor whilst this cold snap lasts. We'll find out next week as the cold snap is supposed to end this Wednesday, sort of.

Here is one of our badgers obviously concerned about fireworks going off. They are very loud fireworks. I feel our badgers were also concerned about the amount of dogs barking and humans talking/laughing, etc

Switching to a trail cam on the front of the sett. The first video shows a very concerned badger. You can hear the fireworks going off.

The second video shows the last view I have of a badger; heading into the left chamber. Now, I believe there are sett entrances on the left of the main entrance, but trail cams on them showed no badger using them to exit by. There is also a sett entrance to the right of the main entrance, but it is almost impossible for me to train a trail cam on it without the trail cam being exposed to nimble fingers. Therefore I have no idea if the badgers exited and entered by it.

With no other footage since New Years eve, I can only assume that either the badger has stayed asleep in the left chamber, or there is a sett entrance on the left which is unaccounted for.

Before the fireworks disturbed our badgers, they were up to normal badgery matters. The sow brought in huge quantities of bedding. They had a bout of anal rubbing and an attempt at mating. If the sow choses to implant now, then theoretically we can look forward to a late February birth.

There was also a lot of grooming, and an interesting feature is one or both badgers like grooming just inside the main sett entrance. I've seen this behaviour quite a bit.