Blog No 4 Wild Wanderings
29-01-2023
A Badger and….a Ghost
Our location is surrounded by ancient Oak woodlands and a mix of other trees. The Oaks used to be farmed and shipped off to London for high end boat making etc in the late 1800’s. We are also bordered by the River Trent, a fast flowing river that has many beauty spots along its banks.
Farmland, arable and livestock, coppices and small woods, old and new quarries form the fabric of the countryside around us. We are still hanging on to its beauty but ‘Progress’ is always in the wings, threatening to overtake us.
It’s a rich tapestry, and one I am pleased to live in, and in my small way try to record.
The wildlife is also rich and varied, and one of the most beautiful animals living around us are the Badgers.
Their tracks can be seen everywhere in the fields and woods. We also have quite a few Badger Setts, some of them being recorded up to a hundred and fifty years ago. I am sure many more are older than this.
I don’t often visit the areas where the Setts are, I try not to disturb them because they are very quick to abandon the Sett if they feel threatened.
On one occasion, when myself and my friend and wildlife ‘Toggie’ Alan, did set up to try and get a few pics of the local colony, it was very memorable.
It was late summer, and it had been a beautiful clear day and evening, which had made us quite excited as to the outcome of our little mission. Sunset was around 21.45 hrs and we had been set up and ready for about an hour or so. Positioning ourselves down wind, the first thing a Badger does on emerging is smell the air, and the human scent is a danger sign to them, and they soon retreat underground.
The field in which we were sitting was arid and dry and the soil and ground around us was a deep red, this combined with the rich red sunset sky gave me the feeling of being on Mars, dry ,red, hot and humid with a twinge of excitement and trepidation in the air.
The sun proceeded to get lower and we were starting to lose hope of an appearance, when all of a sudden a head popped up. It was a large Boar and he looked quite old, he did the usual sniffing and staring and then scampered out of the hole. He scanned the area around several time and he didn’t spot us, but they are a bit short sighted. We both fired off a couple of shots before he disappeared into the tall grass.
We were both pleased with our efforts given the light conditions, and this was in the wild, so there are no second chances.
It was now really twilight and we started to pack away our gear.
It felt quite eerie with the dim light and the silhouettes of the trees, then a soft almost silent whirring sound stopped our activity and we both in unison exclaimed ‘what was that’ ?.
We both looked up and circling our little camp at only about ten feet high was a white fuzzy, flapping figure of a bird. It was an amazing sight, an almost ghostly apparition. It was a Barn Owl orbiting around us eyes fixed on the ground. But it got better, the Owl settled in the high hawthorn hedge that was next to the Badger Sett. Its white silhouette giving away its identity. Both our cameras were packed but we hurriedly got them unpacked while the visitor observed us from the hedge. This was exciting in the extreme. I was all fingers and thumbs and failed to get my camera ready. Alan did manage to get his quickly set and pointed the lens towards the beautiful outline in the tree. The Owl took off and quite deliberately made a few more orbits, coming down so low we could almost touch it talons. Was he just being friendly or was he telling us to ‘go away’ from his territory, we’ll never know.
Circling ever higher he disappeared into the summery gloom of the night sky.
The whole experience only lasted about 5 minutes, but it seemed that time had stood still.
It was a breath-taking experience which I will never forget. I felt I was in the presence of beauty and wisdom which I can’t easily explain in words. But it was unworldly. Maybe a universal spirit does exist, there was some strange form of connection between us all.
Alan's'photo was blurry and not to clear but we have a record of it. But sometimes you can’t explain what’s behind an image and how magical the encounter was.
The next morning, I reported the sighting to the Barn Owl trust. They like people to do this as the Barn Owl is under threat.
Barns Owls do not move their hunting range from where they are born, so live locally their whole life. This means if their habitat is lost, through example, development, their food supply dries up and they perish.
It is such a beautiful and magical bird; it would be tragic if they don’t survive the pressure of the urban sprawl.
Let’s hope they can.
RJM
