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On the border between Harju and Rapla counties, in a hazel stand with large aspens and some spruces and birches, there is a badger castle with more than ten openings. Here on a hazel a trail camera was mounted in the end of January to observe whether badgers, besides sleeping, also go outdoors in winter.
Photos and video records testify that there is plenty of activity whenever warmer weather arrives, and that there is no lack of visitors. Four badgers, probably two adults and their two young, are active at the den every evening and night. Dense snowfall and six degrees of cold have not made them retire into the den.
Tracks of activity extend even beyond the den area, holes scraped during foraging were seen in a radius of 50 metres and even further.
They certainly find things to eat. Gnawed mushrooms were lying about in the badgers’ yard and there were faeces too.
A somewhat poor photo shows the badger eating something-someone, it is hardly gnawing just on a tree stump. Maybe it is an unlucky marten that got caught or a dead pike. Unfortunately we cannot know.
Others besides me have been interested in the life of the badger family. As the video shows two raccoon dogs push their head into the badgers’ den almost every evening, probably to exasperate the owners. So too do a fox with its tail ravaged by mange and a healthy fox.
Our familiar badger pair Kadi and Tõnis in Saaremaa has failed us and moved somewhere else. It is actually good news and we hope that this time they will act as is worthy of an animal of the year and not only play at being badgers as last year and the year before the last, when we did not even get to see the long-awaited cubs. Playing badger meant that they didn’t have the energy to go somewhere and do something exciting – just sat guarding their burrow.
Kadi and Tõnis.
