OCTOBER is the easiest month to spot badgers as they’re preparing to survive the winter by putting on 50 per cent of their body weight. This means that they’re preoccupied with their food hunt and are less wary of humans – making it the perfect time of year to see these elusive mammals.

Garden wildlife expert Sean McMenemy tells us how we can appreciate one of Britain’s oldest mammals this month...

In recent years, badgers have come to our attention due to the badger culling debate. Badgers have been around in Britain for half a million years, with the UK being home to 25 per cent of the global badger population (around 250,000-400,000 badgers). So we have an international duty to protect them.

Badgers are a valued species and are protected by law in the UK. They’re vital to the wider ecosystem, helping smaller animals who use their tunnels and spreading seeds that help plants to grow and flourish across broad areas.

We don’t fully appreciate badgers, which is why the Badger Trust is this month urging us to recognise the beauty of this protected species.

How to spot a badger in the wild

A lot of people may have seen a badger on the roadside, but not many have been lucky enough to spot the elusive creature alive in the wild (despite being the UK’s largest land predator). This is mostly due to the European badger using its impressive hearing and keen sense of smell to avoid its only real predator – humans.

Oxford Mail: Emma Sanger-Horwell caught this badger gazing at its reflection

Badgers occupy a large range of habitat types, often found in woods and copses, scrubs, hedgerows, quarries, moorland, open fields and even on housing estates.

If you want to spot a badger in the wild, you need to look for the following:

• Look out for a badger sett – the biggest setts can accommodate around 15 badgers but usually, groups consist of five or six.

• Badgers prefer to build their setts on slopes, as this helps with the drainage.

• Look out for the entrance to the sett, which will be built in a ‘D’ shape, and carefully dug latrines (badger toilets) nearby.

• While digging a sett, badgers create mounds of soil around the entrances – if these heaps of soil look fresh, then you may have spotted an active badger sett.

• Make sure that you gain permission from the landowner to watch the badger sett, unless it is located in a public area.

Badgers have a keen sense of smell so don’t wear any perfume when trying to spot them. To ensure you don’t frighten the badgers, you’ll need to wear dark clothes including gloves and a hat. If you bring a torch to light your path, don’t shine it on the badgers. Arrive around an hour before sunset and stay motionless while you wait. Make sure you don’t sit too close to the sett and take a comfy cushion to sit on as you’ll need plenty of patience.

How can we help badgers in our gardens?

On the whole, badgers can live in harmony with humans without any serious conflict. However, badger activity can lead to problems in urban gardens. Luckily, there are ways we can prevent this whilst still supporting and appreciating these iconic creatures.

Oxford Mail:

If you see a badger in danger make sure to report incidents to the RSPCA or your local rescue centre. Remember that badgers are wild animals and have strong claws and jaws, so never approach one, no matter how tempting that might be.

What to feed them

Badgers are omnivores so can eat pretty much anything in the wild. Earthworms make up around 80 per cent of a badger’s diet so during times when the ground is solid, like during a winter frost, you can support our British badgers by supplementing their diet with specially formulated badger food, peanut kernels or dried fruit.

Always make sure there’s fresh, clean water available as supplementary food contains less moisture than their juicy earthworms. It’s imperative that you leave any supplementary food for them in small amounts so that they don’t become dependent on you.

 

Oxford Mail:

Specialist badger food can dissuade the badgers from causing damage to your homegrown fruit and veg, while not encouraging the local social group to become larger than natural levels. Putting out badger food will also keep badgers away from the food you give to your garden birds.

More from Sean McMenemy at arkwildlife.co.uk

 

Support badgers in Oxfordshire

THE vigilant members of Oxfordshire Badger Group are the guardians of badgers in our county.

The 30 year-old voluntary group aims to promote, for the public benefit, the conservation and protection of badgers, their setts and habitats, and to advance education on the ecology, behaviour and protected status of badgers, their setts and habitat.
See oxonbadgergroup.org.uk