Injured Badger Hole Adventures - Episode 01

In this video series I document my adventures at the hole (burrows) of a European Badger (Meles Meles). I found his dwelling a while ago and visited it with some regularity. Unfortunately, the trail camera I originally had there vanished. Badgers are nocturnal animals so between the time when my old trail cam disappeared and the time a new one arrived, I had no reference of his wellbeing.

After the installation of the new camera, I reviewed the footage on it and saw the previously healthy badger was visibly injured and didn't look that well. That prompted me to start making more regular trips to his hole and document the experiences as I launched my attempts to save the badger's life with winter right around the corner.

Unfortunately, the trail camera I currently have only shoots 10 continuous seconds of video before interruption, and continues after 5 seconds if there still is activity in front of the motion sensor.

My adventures at the injured badger hole are accompanied by a resident woodpecker, and when I'm not around, woodrats.

I'm looking forward to sharing more of the adventures at the injured badger hole as they happen. There's no shortage of unexpected animal, plant and fungi kingdom encounters in the woods.

In this episode I introduce the badger's den, show trail cam footage of what he looked like when he was healthy and then when he got injured. I then place a cardboard box with food consisting of apple pieces, aguaymanto, grapes, popcorn and some broken nuts in front of the main entrance hole in hopes that the badger would eat it to help him through the night, and roll a whole apple into his main hole – that’s because I knew the rats would be attracted by the food and would eat it, but I hoped they wouldn’t quite dare to go deep into the burrow.

I then set up a trail camera in a way that would capture both the hole and the food box, and introduce the woodpecker who now follows me around even though initially he would fly away as soon as I showed up.

00:00 Fallen coniferous tree
00:53 The underground home of the injured European badger
02:18 Closer look at the entrances to the badger’s burrow
03:33 Badger hole from where my first trail camera disappeared
05:33 Wild boars attacking my trail camera
06:33 Trail cam footage of the badger from old camera
06:50 Trail cam footage from new camera shows the badger injured
08:19 Footage from trail cam at another location showing healthy badger pair preparing for winter
08:33 Injured badger’s main entrance and exit hole
09:11 I brought food to help the injured badger survive
10:51 Wood rats
11:52 Showing fruit and nuts I brought to help feed the injured badger
13:46 Rolling whole apple into the badger’s primary entrance hole
14:32 Setting up the trail camera to capture what goes on when I’m absent
15:03 Digging up small hole for food box
15:33 Finding garlic parachute (Mycetinis Alliaceus) mushroom
18:07 Returning an accidentally unearthed beetle back into soil
18:36 Badgers’ claws are made for digging
18:49 Arming and tilting the trail camera
19:19 Final rescue setup
20:04 Introducing the resident woodpecker
21:48 Combined (before and after injury) trail cam footage of the badger and rats

Music for the trail cam footage: Slavonic March by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Keep rocking :o)

Mark
https://www.nophoneman.com