Out on wednesday night to a local nature reserve with some great wildlife not too far from the city centre. Quite a nice day today with sunny spells\cloud - a nice change from the recent rainy weather. You could definitely call this a 'soggy spring' as its been raining most days now since the beginning of April and most of the outdoor walking paths are all very muddy and wet so maybe its time to get the wellies out!!
Anyway I digress! The walk last night was amazing as 2 badgers came out of the sett just a couple of minutes after we sat down to watch which was very obliging of them! After another few minutes there were more and more badgers out and about running, walking and shuffling about. One even appeared to be moving backwards doing a kind of MichaelJjackson moonwalk!! I think it was taking fresh bedding into the sett! Brilliant to watch. At this point we counted something like 10 badgers although difficult to work out if we were double counting, ie they go down one entrance then come out another exit as the sett is quite big. Anyway they were running about all over the place although a couple stuck their noses in the air and got a whiff of our scent then shot down their holes! After a while most of them seemed to have wandered off in various directions so we took this chance to make an exit from our viewpoint so as not to disturb them at all. What a great badger watching experience as you normally see a few at most when watching a sett. They all seemed about the same size so not sure if some young were still down in the sett.
On a more serious note away from the badgers' antics I cannot give away the location as there are some people out there whos intentions towards badgers are not very honourable. I am sure anyone reading this will understand. As a member of a local badger group I am all too aware of the need to keep locations of setts private etc. A shame we have do this in the 21st century but the welfare of these wild creatures must come first.
On the way back from the sett to the car saw loads of bunnies and a few birds but it had turned a bit dreich and rainy and light was fading (10pm). Stopped at the edge of the reserve and waited to see if we could see any bats at a place we have seen them lots of times before. Waited for a fe minutes and then a couple of tiny bats started flying low over our heads in search of insects (hopefully not from our heads!)! They were very small and although I am no expert on bats I believe they were pipistrelle bats. Absolutely love watching bats and their acrobatics, its one of the great displays in nature and to think they do it all for free!! Great stuff and I am sure they come out in the rain because by this time there was some light but steady rainfall. A nice walk and will file it under the 'pleasant local experience' category.
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