Slowworms too go in the stomach of badgers if this protected legless lizard, looking like a length of copper tubing happens to be in the badger’s path.
Photo: Tiit Hunt
Photo: Tiit Hunt
Photo: Tiit Hunt
In real life the badger is actually not quite as the creature in the Soviet-time cartoons where it gathered winter stocks for itself wrapped in dotted scarves - mostly larger-than-life unidentified boletes. But the badger is really a voracious creature that loves varied food. The list of animal food of badgers is long – from insects to mammals. The choice of food depends of course on what creatures are in season on the hunting grounds of the badger and how plentiful they are. There is no lack of insects, snails and slugs during the warm period.
Photo: Tiit Hunt
Photo: Tiit Hunt
Photo: Tiit Hunt
Photo: Tiit Hunt
Among the animal food mice too go on the menu of the badger, depending on its habitat – in the forest most numerously bank voles, in fields Microtus voles. The badger does not say no to a soft-furred mole either when it pokes its nose out from a soil heap in early night. The favourite protein of badgers concurs with the favourite meal of hedgehogs, earthworms; the badger can if necessary kill the barbed ball itself too and eat it. The badger also checks the nests of ground nesting birds and feasts on the chicks; with luck it even occasionally catches a bird as a more substantial bite.
Although rarely, the badger can even kill a hedgehog. The claws of a badger are the only ones in the forest long enough to reach in between the spines of the hedgehog.
Photo: Tiit Hunt
Photo: Tiit Hunt
