January Update

In terms of simply watching badgers, the 2004 viewing season was of a high quality. However, in terms of trying to understand badger behaviour, it was also very frustrating. I'm quite convinced, for example, that the current perception of badger society is very misleading. I do not believe that a Clan is led by a dominant male and female pair, or that the dominant female will kill any other cubs born in the main sett. Unfortunately, I have neither the knowledge, nor resources, to devise a research programme to find out exactly how badger society works down here in Devon. If any research centre would like to join forces with us, bringing their knowledge to our watching facilities, we would be very happy to hear from them.

Clan Membership.
It will be late February before Anne and I start watching the badgers again. We will be looking to see if Alfred is still there, how many females have bred and how many adults are in the clan. We do know that so far, we are once again having a very mild winter. If this continues, I would expect the clan to have kept the two "extra" adults. We will not know how many cubs are present this year until early May, when they usually come above ground for the first time.

Video Diary Update
Unfortunately, the reorganisation of the BBC has had a major impact on the Natural History Unit, and it is unlikely that they will be doing any more Diary Update's. We are hoping to put a short video clip of badger action on this web site. However, it will not be live or updated, as this has proved to be prohibitively expensive.

Photography Evenings
These are proving to be very popular, with pre bookings for this year already in excess of the total that came in 2004. Those who came in the summer were very pleasantly surprised to find that they were taking their pictures in daylight. We realised that our literature gives the impression that all pictures will be taken in the dark. In fact, the evenings usually take place between 7.00pm and 9,00pm, so whether or not you will need a flashlight depends upon the time of year you come.

Opening Times
With Easter arriving early this year, we will be opening on the 25th March for both viewings and photography evenings. We will be warning guests to keep an eye on the weather and wrap up warm, as it can be cold at that time of year.

We hope you are able to come and watch the badgers with us this year.

Kevin and Anne.

Clan Membership
The watching season is well under way, and we now know that we have 11 principal members of the Clan and one occasional visitor.

Alfred is still the dominant male and looks in good condition, apart from a small bald patch just above his tail. This is more likely to be the result of Mange and fighting, rather than old age.

For the last few years the Clan has had a constant adult membership of seven, three males and four females. Whatever cubs were born in any particular year have always been forced out in the normal dispersal process, when winter food shortages started to occur. They faced a perilous journey to find new homes, either with a nearby Clan that has a suitable vacancy or until they can find a territory of their own. This year, however, two of last year's six cubs have stayed with the Clan, taking the adult membership up to nine. The reason for this is almost certainly the weather.

Weather conditions
The winter of 2002/3 was unusually mild, but the winter just gone was even milder. We only had snow on two or three occasions, and it stayed only for a very short time, much to the disgust of our young daughter. Frosts were also rare and short lived. The consequence of this was that the ground rarely froze and so earthworms, the badger's staple food, would still have been available. It is likely that the larger food supply than usual meant that the adults only had to force four of the cubs to leave. It will be interesting to see if, when we have a normal winter, the Clan shrinks back to seven. As it is very difficult to tell males and females apart when they are young, we do not know the sex of the two new adults. If they stay to the point where the differences do become more apparent, it will be interesting to check one of the dispersal theories. This is that when the adults kick the cubs out, they start with the males. According to this, both of our new adults should be females. We will let you know as soon as we do.

This year's cubs
This year just one of the four females has bred, and she has had two cubs. Even if last years cubs are females, they were too young to breed this year. On the face of it, this disproves another theory about badgers, namely that an individual will only breed in alternate years because rearing cubs takes so much out of them that they are not in good enough condition to breed the following year. However, we know that this year's mother also had cubs last year and the year before! The Clan seems to have one non- breeding female. She is the largest of the females, probably because she does not suffer the drain of rearing cubs. This year's mother is the smallest, but still manages to breed most years. This just goes to show how little is actually known about badgers. There are still many areas for further research.

Viewing patterns
We have just come out of a six-week dry spell which produced unusual viewings, and which showed that a large part of a badger's behaviour is determined by weather and its impact on their food supply. Our normal viewing pattern is four to six badgers out at once with lots of interchanging. We would expect to see perhaps nine of the clan during a watch. The dry spell drove the earthworms deep underground, and as a consequence, the badgers were hungry. Within a few minutes of getting settled in the hide, we would have the entire clan out and tucking into the peanuts with a will! It took about five days of rain before the ground softened up enough for the worms to return and normal watching to be resumed.

Tawny Owls
Watching the Tawny Owls this year has been very frustrating. We have a nest box behind the hide with both rear and front facing internal cameras. Over the winter, as the old nest box had seen better days, we decided take the opportunity to design and install a box that we thought would supply better pictures. The new box was duly installed in February, with its twin cameras, and all was in working order. The female had no sooner started nesting however, than the rear camera packed up!

Unfortunately, nesting females can be so aggressive, that it was just not practical to go back and replace the camera. We resigned ourselves to not having any pictures of the (previously single) chick growing up, making do instead with listening to their activity. What we did not realise until after they had left the nest however, was that unlike the last four years, there were two chicks rather than one. If the camera had been working, we should have been able to watch some incredible pictures. That, however, is wildlife watching and we have to console ourselves that there will be another year!

More fighting !
Two of our males have very recently been appearing with nasty wounds on their faces. Kevin and Anne have both been getting more confused about who is who amongst the males, apart from Alfred, who is still easy to tell apart. We had just convinced ourselves that the two wounded males were Scar (6-7 years old) and Hopalong (9-10 years old) when another male appeared. This male was apparently larger than either of the other two and promptly attacked the one we thought was Scar. As Scar is the male who had previously attacked Hopalong and nearly driven him out of the territory, we had thought that the badger we had labelled 'Scar' this year was responsible for the current fighting. Now we don't know who the attacker is, Anne is keen to get a better view of this other male. Even though we have been watching these badgers for 7 1/2 years, they still amaze and surprise us!

Video Diary updates
We don't know quite what is happening with the video diary on the BBC Nature website. We haven't been able to access the video diary for a while now and have heard nothing from the BBC Natural History Unit about further filming. We will be trying to contact them about this. Meanwhile, if you want to see this year's clan for yourself, you will just have to come and visit. We look forward to seeing more of you here! Kevin and Anne.

2003

I must apologise for having to start this update with a review of events in 2003. For reasons which will hopefully not be repeated, Anne and I only managed to post one update in spring, for the entire year.

Cubs

2003 saw three of the four females produce a total of six cubs. It was the first time so many had bred in one year. It might have been luck, or had something to do with the mild winter. If anything, this winter has been even milder, so it will be interesting to see how many females breed this year.
Cubs, which are usually born in February, don't come above ground until they are ten to twelve weeks old. While the cubs remain below ground, the accepted view is that the females keep them in separate places. We very strongly felt that we had two females rearing their young within a few meters of each other, within the same part of the sett. Unfortunately we were unable to confirm this, which was very disappointing but, hopefully we will have better luck next time it happens.

Weather and food supplies

Despite very dry weather conditions during two critical points of the cubs' first six months (which would have resulted in very high mortality for any clans not receiving supplementary feeding, all six or our cubs survived to winter dispersal. The first incident was a six week drought in early spring. This is a time when the mothers need to reach their maximum milk production levels to feed the cubs well. Their main food at this time of year is earthworms, and these would have been forced deep underground by the dry weather. The second, which was also a drought, occurred when the cubs were trying to build up as much body reserves as possible, ahead of winter.During the winter ,the adults often force the cubs to go and find new territories for themselves. This can be a very traumatic time for the youngsters and it is believed that mortality is high even in normal years.

Clan members

By the end of last watching season Alfred, our dominant male, was still the clan leader and was in very good condition. We will be keeping our fingers crossed that despite his estimated age of 12 years, he is still with us this year. Anne and I have just started watching the badgers again in preparation for the new season, we have not yet seen Alfred but Hopalong, two of the females and at least two of last year's youngsters have been seen . We will try to keep you more up to date on the family this year.

Webcam

After four seasons of the BBC Natural History Unit's generous provision of the badgercam we are very sorry to see it go offline. It is regretable that not only are the BBC not able to withstand the running costs any longer, we are certainly not able to. So, we will all miss having the opportunity to see these badgers from the comfort of our own armchairs, except for the glimpses the BBC hope to bring you by way of occasional video diaries on the BBC Nature website.