I take a short cut through nearby side roads sometimes, in a residential area, with large properties. There's a burn running through the area, eventually forming a pond, with an uncultivated plot of land which backs onto some of the houses. One night I encountered a couple of badgers crossing from the plot to one of the houses. They went up the driveway and were playing around on the gravel - quite happily
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
The south east is a 'bubble' though, aym, and while people continue to flock there for work etc , it will only get more populated and all services will be stretched to breaking point. Britain is small, but not every area is like that - fortunately!
Loads of areas for beautiful wildlife and scenery all over our lovely British Isles
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Some years ago we were staying with friends near Rye - they took us out into a very rural area where there was a high bank - we sat by the hedge while they laid some peanuts around then we sat very still with the wind blowing away from us while the sun went down.
We spent an hour or so watching a family of 9 badgers, big ones, small ones and teenagers, pootling around eating peanuts and slugs just a few feet from us, then they went off into the marshes to find more food.
My first live badgers
As a child growing up in a very rural part of East Anglia I'd never seen a badger, not even a dead one - nowadays I often see them dead on the side of the road - East Anglia must be teeming with them now.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Welshonion, it may not have seen me very well, but it knew I was there - it heard me open the gate(it scrapes on the ground) and looked round for a way to retreat. It could probably smell me too (though the smell of sheep was quite strong and I don't think I'm that bad) but they can smell out pignuts underground etc...
No roads to cross round me - it's half a mile to the nearest lane.
I often see dead ones, and quite often used to see live ones when I was doing taxi service for my daughter at strange times of the night/morning
We see foxes too, but they don't stand much chance if they stray onto the land of one of our neighbours. The Fox Control Society round here takes a stern line. We've watched cubs playing from the bedroom window, then learned a few days later that they'd been killed I've mixed feelings about them, they do take some of our birds, especially the ducks, as they are half wild. They are unclipped and can fly off if they want to and sometimes do and sometimes come back again. But it feels good to have wild animals in your life, even if the 'wild' part takes a form you don't much like.
One or two fox sightings are etched on my memory though. One was a fox running silhouetted across the skyline like an old print. Another was a fox, some distance away at the edge of our sheep paddock trying to catch a female lapwing and she was doing her 'broken wing' routine and drawing him on and away from her nest. I'd read about it but never thought I'd ever see it
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I take a short cut through nearby side roads sometimes, in a residential area, with large properties. There's a burn running through the area, eventually forming a pond, with an uncultivated plot of land which backs onto some of the houses. One night I encountered a couple of badgers crossing from the plot to one of the houses. They went up the driveway and were playing around on the gravel - quite happily
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
The south east is a 'bubble' though, aym, and while people continue to flock there for work etc , it will only get more populated and all services will be stretched to breaking point. Britain is small, but not every area is like that - fortunately!
Loads of areas for beautiful wildlife and scenery all over our lovely British Isles
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Some years ago we were staying with friends near Rye - they took us out into a very rural area where there was a high bank - we sat by the hedge while they laid some peanuts around then we sat very still with the wind blowing away from us while the sun went down.
We spent an hour or so watching a family of 9 badgers, big ones, small ones and teenagers, pootling around eating peanuts and slugs just a few feet from us, then they went off into the marshes to find more food.
My first live badgers
As a child growing up in a very rural part of East Anglia I'd never seen a badger, not even a dead one - nowadays I often see them dead on the side of the road - East Anglia must be teeming with them now.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Welshonion, it may not have seen me very well, but it knew I was there - it heard me open the gate(it scrapes on the ground) and looked round for a way to retreat. It could probably smell me too (though the smell of sheep was quite strong and I don't think I'm that bad
) but they can smell out pignuts underground etc...
No roads to cross round me - it's half a mile to the nearest lane.
I often see dead ones, and quite often used to see live ones when I was doing taxi service for my daughter at strange times of the night/morning
We see foxes too, but they don't stand much chance if they stray onto the land of one of our neighbours. The Fox Control Society round here takes a stern line. We've watched cubs playing from the bedroom window, then learned a few days later that they'd been killed
I've mixed feelings about them, they do take some of our birds, especially the ducks, as they are half wild. They are unclipped and can fly off if they want to and sometimes do and sometimes come back again. But it feels good to have wild animals in your life, even if the 'wild' part takes a form you don't much like.
One or two fox sightings are etched on my memory though. One was a fox running silhouetted across the skyline like an old print. Another was a fox, some distance away at the edge of our sheep paddock trying to catch a female lapwing and she was doing her 'broken wing' routine and drawing him on and away from her nest. I'd read about it but never thought I'd ever see it