Random Wildlife - Found me a badger!

Vince

Vince

Vince

Man of Honour
Joined
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Posts
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Location
Essex
Last night I was woken up by what sounded like somebody in my back garden trying to break in. I come downstairs to have a look what was going on and to my surprise I found this fella rummaging around in a bin that I forgot to put into our little outdoor container.



He stuck around for quite a while and clearly knew I was there as he had a couple of cheeky glances up at me. He then proceeded to drag the contents of the bin all over the garden and make off with a couple of pieces of pizza.

I have decided that badgers are very cool animals :D
 
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One morning on the way to work at 3am (i cycle to work) i had a badger come running out of a garden straight in front of me and across the road,I honestly thought he was coming for me the direction he was going,Scared the crap out of me,Not only because i was not expecting it..but the sound of his nails/claws scraping on the ground as he ran. :D

I occasionally see badgers,Foxes and hear owls around my area..very cool.
 
I do miss the midnight to 2am finishes in my old job, used to see a regular fox, some badgers, hedgehogs and a few owls. I once had an owl swoop down over the car and cruise in front of me for about 10 seconds before changing direction.
 
We've been feeding a hedgehog after spotting it in the garden one night.

Some nights I've been looking out the bedroom window with a torch to see if it's had the food or is wandering round the garden. Tueday night my torch caught something sat on the back of our garden bench - a tawny owl :cool:

I think the hedgehog has hibernated now though - it's not had the food since about Monday.

We've also had a pheasant hop through the back gate, do a lap of the garden and then leave via the gate again :D
 
Rossi~ said:
It's nice to see a thread where people appreciate these sort of animal encounters :)
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I absolutely love it, common visitors in my garden include hedgehogs, foxes, badger! (now named Keith) and we also have a robin who lives in the garden too, I call him Rupert (yea I know I am sad) but he is an incredibly inquisitive bird and always comes to say hello when I am in the Garden. I think they all come off of the train line that runs along the bottom of the garden.

Also I have found out that contrary to what kids television have you believe, Badgers do not in fact like mash potato but are partial to the odd peanut butter sandwich. Next mission "Badger Cam" and a peanut butter sandwich for our friend.
 
Cosimo said:
You need to leave some food out for it and setup a wildlife camera to record it.
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Don't do this in encourages unnatural behaviour and risks bringing the animal into contact with other humans that might not be so friendly.

Badgers are great until they start digging it's amazing the mess they can make in your lawn! We had a fox that used to take afternoon naps in our back garden until the builders moved in the summer before last!
 
So i found this and it seems to give some suggestions on what they like. I may leave a sarnie out for him, set up a camera and se if he comes back. Mind you looking at his size he clearly isn't struggling to find food.

I get the occasional hole dug in the garden but frankly I just stamp it down and throw a bit of seed over it in the spring. no biggie.

http://www.badgerland.co.uk/animals/food/yourgarden.html
 
I popped out to the garage at about 1am a couple of years back and nearly stood on one, it scared the hell out of me at the time :)

After that I started to pay attention to where we put the food down for the birds and realised that there were at least two of them on a regular basis (we saw two together, and one had a scar above the right eye).

They love peanuts, if you put some crushed ones down (about £40 for £25kg) they'll much their way through them in a very thorough manner, hoovering up every bit of it (unlike deer that sort of eat lines of it, and foxes that eat it at random).
They also seem to like sunflower hearts and at a pinch mixed wild bird food and I think suet pellets.

It's surprising what you can get in an urban garden, especially if it's near any greenery, we have had as regular visitors various birds of prey, munjac deer, badgers and when I was too ill to mow the lawn for a few months a couple of years back hares (every morning at between 7-10 am they'd be at the bottom of the garden).


/has 5 tin bins of bird food in the garden and ends up getting some odd looks from the Yodel guy when he has to deliver 100kg of food.
 
A little thread resurrection. It just happened again but this time a different animal. Got home from work as normal and all the cats were in as they normal are waiting for me to get in. I gave them all a snack before their dinner later and while I am dossing about having a look at the post and other mundane stuff while waiting for the wife to get home, I hear one of the cats making a funny noise at the window. I get up and have a look at what all the commotion is about but cant see a thing out back as it is pretty dark, so head into another room out the back of our house where I can turn on the outside light. Sure enough there it was, a rabbit, but this one was big and white not like any wild rabbit I have seen before. In fact the only place I recall seeing rabbits locally was when I used to drive the roads around hanningfield reservoir and I am pretty sure they were always grey/brown in colour, anyway before I could do much it legged it (hopped) up the garden. So gents are there big white rabbits wondering around the gardens in the southend/thorpe bay area or are my suspicions that this is probably somebodys pet that has done a runner more likely?
 
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Vince said:
A little thread resurrection. It just happened again but this time a different animal. Got home from work as normal and all the cats were in as they normal are waiting for me to get in. I gave them all a snack before their dinner later and while I am dossing about having a look at the post and other mundane stuff while waiting for the wife to get home, I hear one of the cats making a funny noise at the window. I get up and have a look at what all the commotion is about but cant see a thing out back as it is pretty dark, so head into another room out the back of our house where I can turn on the outside light. Sure enough there it was, a rabbit, but this one was big and white not like any wild rabbit I have seen before. In fact the only place I recall seeing rabbits locally was when I used to drive the roads around hanningfield reservoir and I am pretty sure they were always grey/brown in colour, anyway before I could do much it legged it (hopped) up the garden. So gents are there big white rabbits wondering around the gardens in the southend/thorpe bay area or are my suspicions that this is probably somebodys pet that has done a runner more likely?
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It`s Harvey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_(film)
 
GeForce said:
Except when smashing through your car's front end :o
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My wife went over an already dead badger on the expressway on the way to work a few years ago in her lowered MX5 and as it was quite low it made quite a mess underneath, i jetwashed off all i could when she got home but for several months afterwards when you had the top down and came to a stop you got a very distinctive smell of badger :(

On a happier note since we moved out to the countryside we see quite a lot of wildlife in and around our garden, we get quite a few pheasants our favourite is one we've named Pedro. We get a lot of birds, herons and rooks along with all the smaller birds. I love just standing out in the garden and watching and listening to it all. Can't say i've never seen a rabbit which wasn't brown/grey although they do seem to come in smaller and larger varieties around here, some are quite big indeed.

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