Some exciting news

Some exciting news

Appleton Wildlife diaries has been choosen to be featured by the BBC wildlife magazine.

Over the next year I will be blogging as a local patch reporter, with the help of my family.

My patch includes woodland, farmland, The River Thames, streams and ponds, ditches and hedgerows and of course my garden.

To show how my patch changes over the year I'm going to take 4 photos of the same scene every month.

Farmland looking into the wood

Pond in the wood

A small stream

View over the River Thames and beyond

One of my favourite activities is Badger watching. I have been doing this since I was three years old.

The sun was out most of the day yesterday, meaning it was quite cold in the evening.

We have a tree that we can sit in and watch the badgers so we don't disturb them.
They have lots of different noises, which I'm trying to work out what they all mean.

Last night the badgers were making two noises in particular.

Churr- a sort of purr and chatter which is a mating call.
Chitter - sounds to me a bit like a chattering dolphin. It has high pitched churps with churring. This can be young badgers playing or adults mating.

We could make out that it was two badgers making most of the noise. They covered a lot of space chasing each other around.

I wish I had recorded the sound.

I have noticed that this time of year they travel further away from the sett, while later in the spring when they have young ones with them, the badgers stay closer to the sett entrances.