Meet the Badgers who Live in Our Victorian Woodland
- Jane Orton
- 16 minutes ago
- 3 min read
We’ve set up a wildlife camera next to a badger latrine in our spinney and the results have been delightful! Dr. Orton introduces our stripy, stocky mustelids…
We’ve set up a wildlife camera in our historic Victorian spinney to spy on our native British wildlife and more recent arrivals. Our camera recently captured footage of Britain’s largest land predator having a good old scratch to get rid of those pesky fleas!
Badgers are unmistakable mustelids with black-and-white stripes along their faces and muzzles. They are stocky, powerful diggers, with an endearing plodding gait, but this gentleman showed how lithe he could be when he needed to scratch those hard to reach places!
We also captured some of the usual behaviour of depositing urine and faeces, complemented by scent-marking from the subcaudal gland.
We’ve also seen badgers using this gland to mark other members of the clan (“allomarking”). Badgers are highly social animals so this is an important aspect of their behaviour!
We set up the camera near a badger latrine, as this is a great place to capture badger activity.
Badger latrines are pits or groups of pits that the badgers dig for their droppings, either around their sett (“hinterland latrines”) or at the edge of their territory (“boundary latrines”). Badgers leave their droppings uncovered, and you can recognise them by their sausage-shape. They can be quite firm, although they will be slimier and darker if the badger has been eating a lot of worms!
It might be the case that the phases of the moon affect badger latrine use. Badger researchers in Britain and in Bulgaria found that darker lunar phases increase badgers’ reproductive activities at their setts so it looks like the phases of the moon do affect badger behaviour.
Students at the University of Bristol found that badgers used their hinterland latrines significantly more in light moon phases, when there was more visibility and boundary latrines more in dark phases. Could this be because it’s more important to mark their boundaries to warn away outsiders in dark phases? Or perhaps badgers like to stay closer to home when there is more visibility and therefore more risk of being seen?
Click the links to learn more about the nocturnal animals that live in our woods, meet our baby tawny owls, our polecats or the other animals that live in our historic Victorian woodland!
Find Out More
If you’re interested in conservation and wildlife, we have a blog series on British wildlife and a series on the people and wildlife of South Asia, from the altitudes of the Himalayas to the dense mangrove forests of Bangladesh!
We also offer online private tuition in our interdisciplinary course, Culture and Conservation, in which you can explore the links between our natural and cultural heritage and study wildlife and cultures from across the world! This is a template of a possible study route and can be combined, adapted, or designed from scratch to suit your interests and goals.
Dr. Orton will work with you to design a course of private tutorials tailored to your needs, ability and schedule. Click the link to find out what it’s like to work with her and contact us to find out more!
Do More
For those who would like to take action to preserve our wild spaces, there’s plenty you can do. If you're lucky enough to have some land, you could plant a woodland from scratch (click the link to read about how we are planting our own native woodland). Even if you don’t have a big garden, there are plenty of things you can do to help biodiversity in your area. Why not put up a solitary bee nesting box or insect home, create a woodpile as a habitat for small creatures or leave small areas of your garden to go wild?
Think about your own area and how you can protect vulnerable but important parts of your own environment. You might even want to start your own project investigating the cultural importance of wildlife in your area. Dr. Orton works with independent scholars undertaking their own research for an independent project, people writing a book or simply those who have a personal interest. Click the link to find out what it’s like to work with her and contact us to get started!
Reach Out
We’d love to see what you’re doing to help wildlife in your area. Follow the Conservation highlight reel on the Orton Academy Instagram to see what we’re getting up to and tag us in to any snaps you put up!
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