Foxy happenings at Badger manor. 12th July 2025

On Saturday 5th July, I added a second trail cam to a sett where badgers duck under a fence. I mounted the trail cam on a bit of scrap timber, with sharpen end, and used an old mount. Said mount is a right pain. I keeps coming loose. Therefore I couldn't get the trail cam to point at a downward angle, and so the thing missed all badger and fox action. I shall try an replace the mount this tomorrow. 

On Monday 7th I went back to this under the fence sett and poured some old hedgehog food down it. It's deemed OK to do this when times are tough for badgers, which it is due to the continuing drought. Worms, a principal diet of badgers, burrow deep underground. This, coupled with rock solid ground, makes life difficult for badgers.

See what happens next.

Our badger decides to investigate a new object in its space. My trail cam on a post.

Early on the morning of 7th July, our badger passes by on its way home, a few hours before I put hedgehog food down the sett hole.

Our badger decides to investigate the sett. I've seen badgers behave like this quite often. Investigate a sett, then ignore it. On the other hand, they will sometimes inspect a sett numerous times, and then move in.

Late that evening, our badger heads back under the fence enroute to its foraging ground. Sorry for quality of video, but the UsoGood trail cams really are quite rubbish. The sensor is too optimistic about the video/ISO capabilities of its camera and video, so it doesn't turn on its IR lights. You just have to squint to see a badger.

The badger realises there is something interesting smelling in the sett.

What spooked our badger? Was it this fox? Was it another badger? Was it something else?

The badger left pretty quickly - the 30 seconds the trail cam goes to sleep, before waking up again. I do this to prevent lots of empty videos. The down side is that it can miss vital action.

Three minutes after this video, a fox turns up.

The fox investigates the sett for the interesting smelling food, but it doesn't stay for some reason. Maybe a badger spooked it? This is one nervous fox, as you'll see.

The fox returns five hours later, and it is very, very, very wary. For why?

Well, the UsoGood trail cam has 'low glow' IR lights. Yeah, right! The things look pretty bright even to my fairly useless human eyes. Even worse, the lights are two red dots roughly two inches apart.

They look like red eyes.

​No wonder the fox is nervous.

This behaviour went on or several minutes, with the fox making multiple attempts to screw up enough courage to get to the food it so desperately wants.

Finally, the fox plucks up enough courage to get some food from the sett. But it didn't hang around for long.

Hunger, and a lack of anything horrible happening by the owner of the scary eyes, wins over its caution.

The fox, a juvenile I believe, is still wary of the scary eyes, but feels more confident to feed.

Now the fox is no longer scared of the eyes, but still has normal wariness of any threat around it.
​

Action now moves to daytime. Our fox is braver, simply as it cannot see scary red eyes.

There was a lot more of this action, with the fox going all the way into the sett until it was satisfied there was no more food to be had.

Meanwhile, our badger was fairly oblivious to what was happening. It could smell fox, though.

Now some more daytime footage of badgers. Well, it's probably the same badger, but badgers sounds better as they could be different. A whole host of badgers seem to come through here.

And finally, I swapped the trail cam mount on post supporting the left hand trail cam. The blasted lock nut kept coming lose, and the whole trail cam flops down. I've also got it to point in a better direction. It's been pointing at a coppiced tree all week.  Secondly, I've increased both the video and image resolution of the UsoGood trail cam, the one opposite the sett hole. Hopefully, the imagery will be better.

I also put more hedgehog food down the hole.