First Ramblings

There are lots of blogs out there, aren't there? I've never been driven to put my thoughts and experiences onto the web. That was until recently when I had a lucky break and I thought other people interested in nature, and possibly photography of said subject, may want to share some of my experiences.

I had recently offered my help to a "nature charity" on the IT side of things. I had visited this site as a normal punter as it had recently opened about a mile, or so, from where I live. My offer of help was accepted and I got to know the the guy who runs the charity, Vince, and felt privileged to be able to help. One night last week, we went for a wander around the farm, pretty much in the dark. He had mentioned some of the wildlife on the site, including badgers, and within a couple of minutes we had found two feeding badgers. We got quite close to them and they were wonderful to see up close. As we continued walking we saw another couple of badgers, possibly the same ones. As we were walking we could hear badgers moving through undergrowth quite near us. Then, we came across a young badger, on it's own chewing on a worm, or something. It was making quite a racket! This animal was not further away than two or three yards. It did notice us after about twenty or thirty seconds, but fantastic to be so close to a wild animal.

I mentioned to Vince that if we could start feeding the badgers we may be able to make a small charge for people to come onto the site and share this experience raising some much needed revenue for the charity. He was quite keen on this idea and mentioned a hide at the end of the field. We had a look at this and it looked pretty good. A nice area in front of the hide which was mown grass, nice and short. We decided this would be a good place to try and get them feeding and the plan was hatched!

I will update the blog over the next few days as to the success of our idea, so please come back for more.