30 days Wild - Day 5 - Spend time with your favourite animal, Badgers

For those of you who regularly view my blog you will know that the badger is my favourite animal.

So it wouldn't be a surprise for one of my Random Acts of Wildness to be badger watching.

I love just sitting and watching my local sett and the badgers are quite used to us being there.

 This evening there were 6 badgers out, 3 cubs and 3 adults. 

The badger with the missing eye, Cookie, another one with bits of both ears missing (a large cub), the badger who comes right up and sniffs our feet, another large cub and one tiny cub.

The tiny cub is now quite boisterous and will push the adults aside with its bum to get at food. Mostly the adults put up with it, he even bit one of the adults legs tonight.

The tiny one came right up to our feet this evening.

At one point a young rat came out of the badgers hole and took a peanut. I was wondering whether badgers would eat a rat.

You can see the tiny cub right in the middle

Tiny cub on the right

This years smallest cub

I took some films which I will load up tomorrow

30 Days Wild - Day 4 - Looking for butterflies

Day 4 of 30 Days Wild - Random acts of Wildness was a 30 minute walk around the field looking for butterflies.

As today was scorching hot with a light breeze it was difficult to take photos because the butterflies wouldn't settle. We saw quite a few different types of butterflies including some we couldn't get close enough to identify.

Last year we went on a guided walk with The Upper Thames Butterfly Conservation group, so today we were able to use some of the things we learnt when looking for butterflies, like not casting a shadow over them and not making too many vibrations as both scare away the butterflies.

We are lucky on my local patch that the farmer leaves very large edges around the crops in the fields where lots of flowers grow, so there are lots of butterflies and bees to look for.

peacock

Small White

Brown Argus

Common blue - male

Moth

30 days Wild - Day Three - Climb a hill

 On day 3 of 30 Days Wild we decided to climb a hill.
White Horse Hill is the highest point in Oxfordshire and from the top you can see over 6 Counties.

The White Horse is the oldest British chalk figure and is thought to date from 1000BC in late Bronze age. The horse is 374ft long. Nobody knows why it is there, but some say it could be a tribe emblem, or it could be religious and maybe based on the horse Goddess Epona.
It is difficult to see from on the hill itself, but you can see it from the main road down below.

On the top of the hill are the remains of Uffington castle. A Iron age hill fort dating from 300BC to AD 43.  It is a large enclosure surrounded by a 3m deep ditch. There would have been large wooden round huts inside.

Ditch surrounding Uffington castle

Panoramic view

The most interesting thing about being so high up was watching the Red Kites and a Kestrel from above and getting a chance to see things from their perspective. Sometimes they were exactly level with us.

We sat for a while on the top of the hill looking down across the countryside and listening to the Skylarks and Rooks.

Meadow Pipit

The steep rippled steps at the side of 'The Manager' are known as Giants steps and were formed by retreating permafrost during the Ice Age. The legend goes that The White Horse comes alive and feeds from The Manager during the night

The Manger - thought to be made by melting ice during the Ice Age.

Kestrel

Dragon Hill, in the right of the photo is a flat topped hillock. It is said that George slew the dragon here and the blood that was spilt prevents the grass on the top growing over the chalk.
It is also said that Uther Pendragon, father of King Arthur is buried beneath the hill.

Rook

Jackdaws in flight

My favourite photo of the day

30 Days Wild - Day Two - A piece of sky, an extraordinary activity

One of my favourite books is My Name Is Mina. by David Almond
The book is about a girl that is home-educated and what she gets up to.
Sometimes she sets herself an activity which she calls an Extraordinary activity.
So for the second day of 30 Days Wild I decide to do one of Mina's Extraordinary activities, which is to look at a piece of sky for 30 minutes to see what things pass through.

Over the 30 minutes I saw a Red Kite struggling against the wind.
A Kestrel trying its hardest to stay in one place, eventually giving up and flying away.
The Great Spotted Woodpecker flew in, noticed me sat in the garden and flew away.
Bees buzzed through, the Jackdaws chased the Crow and the clouds raced across the sky making patterns as they went.

30 Days Wild - Day One - Follow a trail

It's the first day of The Wildlife Trusts campaign to encourage people to do 30 days of Random Acts of Wildness.

For the last week we have been coming up with some ideas and couldn't wait for it to start.

For the first day I decided to do - Follow a trail.

My local patch is criss crossed with trails left by animals and I though it would be fun to follow a few and find out who made them and where they lead to.

The first trail has been made by a badger coming out from my favourite sett and going over the adjoining field.

Being quite heavy, badgers leave an obvious trail. Their trails are used for many generations and the ones from my local sett lead either out into the fields, down to the stream or out to their latrine.

Badgers will dig under fences, climb over logs leaving a smooth surface, push wire out of the way sometimes leaving tufts of hair.

Last year during harvesting the local farmer put the haybales on the badger trail across the field and the badger pushed right through rather than walking around.

Another badger trail

Badger trail over a fallen branch

The badgers at the bottom of our garden climb the small 1m high wall that separates the lane and our neighbours garden.

Badger trail through our neighbours orchard. 

Rabbits - rabbit trails are hard to follow as the tiny paths often disappear into the brambles.

Rabbit trail

Rabbit trail

 The woods are covered with deer trails, these are easier to follow than the badgers trails as they are taller. They lead from resting places, to streams and out into the fields. The Roe deers are quite predictable and can been seen in certain places at certain times of the day.

Deer trail

Deer trail down to the stream

Some trails are used by more than one animal

Trail used by badgers and deers.

Small mammals such as rats, mice and voles leave trails like this one under a sheet of metal

The hares don't make a trail of their own, they follow the tracks made by the tractors.

Humans leave their own trails through the woods!

 A good book for learning about trails and tracks is The Nature Tracker's Handbook by Nick Baker