Tuesday 28th July - introducing the radio

After last nights success, although I was on my own tonight, I thought I may take the camera over and test the water, so to speak. I figured if I fired the flash and the badgers tolerated that, I could fire the shutter on the camera and if they tolerated that, put the two together and take a shot! Anyway, we decided that it would be good to introduce a radio into the hide to create some background noise and to slowly increase the volume to see if the badgers would tolerate it. This would obviously hide any noise created by spectators and hopefully the badgers wouldn't mind. I didn't take the camera as you can't introduce too much in one night. So, sat in the hide, Radio 4 on quietly and all set. I was quite excited already as on the way down to the hide I thought I had seen something fly into a nearby tree. Having a good idea as to where it had landed, I flicked on the LED spotlight I use with the badgers and walked towards the tree. I was only about 15 metres away when some movement in the middle of the beam caught my eye. A gorgeous, wild Tawny Owl was there looking down at me and not seeming to care in the slightest what was happening. This was lovely to see as although you hear them fairly regularly, you don't see them that often.

Anyway, the time was ticking by and 10:30 came and went. 10:45, and still no sign of badgers. A couple of minutes later a small badger appeared from the path. He was eating nuts and slowly moving towards the hide. Just after this I noticed a larger animal approaching from the path to the left of the hide. This is where things didn't go so well. The larger animal could obviously hear the radio. It was very nervous and glancing over at the hide repeatedly. Eventually it ran away from the hide sticking very close to the long grass around the edge of the feeding area. The smaller badger had moved towards the hide, but after only three minutes, it disappeared off to the right. That appeared to be it. I left the hide and noticed plenty of food still on the floor. As I walked back up towards the farm I found three badgers feeding on the path, but they were aware I was there and kept a reasonable distance between me and themselves. Not the best of nights, but we couldn't expect the introduction of the radio to go that well.