The Badgers' Tale Goes On. REV

Two of last night's visitors

So first there was the nasty, noisy fight and then the next night no badgers came into the garden. The 'drinks and snacks' went largely untouched, except by the neighbours' cats.

A day later, the camera trap recorded two little badgers come into the garden, one after the other, and just these two have gone on visiting but not at first actually in each other's company as far as I could tell.

Then, the night before last, the two youngsters came in together and, last night, we recorded three together. But I think these may all be this years' cubs, which are now quite well grown. It seems that the family group has been scattered - it was eight before the battle - four adults and four cubs.

I know that badger battles can be very fierce (it certainly sounded like that during the battle) and that 'Onebar', the big boar, had been marking the garden recently as his territory (a process achieved by briefly sitting down). So, I think what may have happened is that he was challenged by another adult boar and either lost or he and some of the others decided to move away. We shall see. It is difficult to identify them, especially as the nights draw in but hopefully time will tell more about what happened.

Meanwhile, I am pleased to see at least a few of them.


However, I am far less pleased with this news:

Yes the great British badger cull is to resume and it has been extended to another county.

More about this sad situation here c/o Channel 4.

And opposition to the cull from many experts described HERE. 

New Life on Exmoor

The Exmoor rivers are in torrent but up on the high moors new life begins..

A turbulent East Lyn River

A new-born foal rests by its mother. 

More Exmoor ponies.

The source of the River Ex which flows south to find the more distant sea coast.

A green-eyed highland cow - part of the hardy Exmoor herd

A little highland boy calf - seeming dejected in the pouring rain. 

Another highland cow.

The high moor is saturated

The Red Deer of Exmoor

Wild Red Deer on Exmoor - where they have been for thousands of years.

Difficult to get close. They are still hunted. A lone young buck at the top and the two pictures below show a group of hinds and calves (I am told these are the correct terms).

Illusive little river bird.

The East Lyn River out here in Exmoor in Devon is fierce. It is powering down its rocky course taking no prisoners of any loose vegetation. It has been raining hard on the high moors and although the sun is now shining, the torrents of brown tannic water resulting along the river course are impressive.

We are on the track of an illusive but remarkable little aquatic bird - the dipper. On a quiet river it seems more fish than bird and walks along the riverbed under the water looking for food. Here among the torrents it stays in the dark river edges where the water moves more slowly, putting its head underwater to look for its aquatic insect food. Chestnut brown with light edges to dark feathers giving them an almost fish-scale like appearance and a bright white breast.

They are always moving and those river dark edges make photography very difficult.

Another Exmoor speciality: cream tea (scones and whortleberry jam with wasp.)

The Rainbow in a Starling's Wing

I love my starlings.

I love the babbling noise that they make in the mornings hidden up in the tall hawthorn at the bottom of my garden. I love the enthusiasm with which the fledglings take to the birdbath on a sunny day. I love the fact that they form one of the great wonders of nature - the murmuration - a whirling, swirling ever-changing abstract shape in the sky made of hundreds of individuals. I love the fine speckled adult winter plumage against the snow and the way over the summer months that the plumage of the juveniles morphs from their innocent brown to an adult coat of many colours.

And I love the rainbow in their wings when the sunshine hits them just right.



In some other places in the world the starling is seen as a pest species. Here in the UK it is in inexplicable decline. The second blood of fledglings is now visiting the garden and the flock I think is healthy.

Parent attends to young fledgling back in May

A juvenile shows off an adult 'waistcoat'

Battle of the badgers - oh no!

The night before last, the neighborhood was woken up by badger loudly 'snickering' and screaming.It was about 11.30, which means I would have been asleep for at least an hour.

I shone my torch out of the window to see what was happening and to try to break it up, and the badgers which had been fighting on my lawn retreated to the hedgerow behind. However, the fighting, judging from the noise, continued for some time, growing fainter as they moved away.

Earlier - before I went to sleep - a badger cub had been quietly feeding on the lawn.

The first short film shows two badgers fighting - but silently.

The second does not show very much as by this point they are in the hedgerow but you can hear the extraordinary sounds.

My guess from the literature is that this is a territorial battle and a new badger was trying to move in.

Badger fights can result in terrible injuries and even death.

Last night no badgers came into the garden - the first time this has happened since the Spring and all the snacks and drinks were untouched.

A red-legged Shieldbug

This strange little animal is a red-legged shieldbug. It's about 1 cm across and this is an adult found down by the canal where it was artfully sitting on the top of a thistle. The adults like fruit but are also partly predatory preying on other insects.  

The Whale That Asked For Help

Here's something that made me think. A southern right whale approaches a boat and asks for some nasty marine debris to be removed from its mouth.

See Huffington Post account: HERE

What happens when cat meets badger?

So, the neighbours' cats have not been slow to appreciate there may be a few snacks to be found on the lawn that may appeal to them. I have discussed this with the cats, stressing that they are for the badgers but the cats remain equally convinced that they are for them. 

So here is what happened when the first badger of the evening meets a cat (the one shown above) in the snack zone:

So as you can see in the short video above - what happened was not much! I witnessed the whole interaction and the cat looked up at the badger when it arrived and the badger (being poor of vision) went about its business until it scented the cat. It then raised its head and sniffed in that direction. The cat neither hissed nor arched its back but, after a while, nipped off. It may be that it sensed that more badgers were on their way, as indeed you will see in the second clip. In fact cats and badgers clearly coexist here with no problem.

I think generally speaking there is little chance of confrontation. The cats have better vision and are far more agile and can easily stay out of the way of the badgers. The badgers also seem very risk-averse and rather timid,


A taxi driver was telling me the other evening about his view of badgers. 'They can kill any dog', he insisted. I said that I doubted they would attack dogs and he firmly stated that he knew this to be true and he and his dog were 'attacked' by one.

They were out walking and this badger came 'charging' up the path at them. He threw his beer bottle in its path where it exploded. This,he added, stopped the badger and it turned around and ran off back down the path. He was pleased with this result.

Poor badger! I think what probably happened was that the badger was running away from something else and did not see or smell the taxi-man and dog in its panic, but when the bottle exploded it was minded - not surprisingly - to go the other way. But it is a good example of a likely misinterpretation exacerbated because the taxi man knew that badgers were famously fierce when dogs are deliberately set on them (something he later revealed in conversation) and he thought there was risk and reacted.

Postcard from the Isle of Wight - Limpetland

On a high tide the flat rocks of the Bembridge Ledge reveal many fine large conical limpets.

The Bembridge Ledge looking towards St Helen's harbour on the Isle of Wight

Bembridge Lifeboat Station

View from The Duver looking across the old tidal mill pond to the Harbour.

The Summer Fox

Here he is the scourge of the British countryside - on a quiet night out in a suburban garden somewhere in the south of England. 

A cheeky youngster I think - long of legs and tail, and with neat black booties.

In which I appear at the Edinburgh Festival!

No really... 

But not the Edinburgh Fringe (which opens shortly), but the Edinburgh Arts Festival!

I was honoured to join in an event with the Mexican artist, Arial Guzik, organised by the Arts Catayst. 

Arial designs and produces mechanisms and instruments 'to enquire into the various languages of nature' and has long been interested in cetaceans. He is also a musician, draftsman and illustrator and director of the Nature Expression and Resonance Research Laboratory in Mexico, an organisation which explores natural resonance, mechanics, electricity and magnetism and how these phenomena can be applied to music and sound experiments.

Arial was exhibiting an underwater resonance instrument designed to communicate with whales and dolphins in the deep seas.

My role was to contribute to a discussion with Arial about cetaceans and their abilities to communicate and perceive the world around them, and the problems that we are creating by adding our noise to the oceans. Arial's work is helping to draw attention to all these issues..

 More about Arial's Holoturian which is on display until August 30th HERE
And the Arts Catalyst HERE

Arial Guzik

And here some images of the great grey grim (and magnificent) city of Edinburgh.

Adverts for the Edinburgh Fringe abound:
Here's some

And here is some more -

More about the Fringe Festival HERE