The badger emergence is between 10pm to 11.45pm… they are back in their sett by about 5 am.

There are signs that at least three unused sett entrances are now being used, I will be moving my camera around them over the next week to see what is using the sett, hopefully it will  be a pregnant sow badger.

I serviced our old barn owl box yesterday and removed a fair amount of debris including owl pellets and a long dead young blue rock pidgeon. I left the cleaning aperture to the box open all afternoon to air and dry out the interior before adding some dry saw dust and short straw. The barn owls now have the choice of two comfortable homes here.

While the weather has been really wet it has been fairly mild which has helped most of the wild animals and birds, we have had around 2000 rooks, jackdaws, crows on our barley stubbles along with about 30 blue rock pidgeons a few ravens, a covey of 7 english partridge and around 15 -20 pheasants on a daily basis. The smaller varieties of wild bird are inumerable, I am surprised that they all manage to find somethng worth eating on a daily basis as they have been gleaning the stubbles for 3 months.

The handsome  fox has been here every night for several weeks looking for a dinner of  road kill, last night the fox tried the spahgetti in tomato sauce that is positioned next to the stoat in the image below as well as the road kill.

We had a visit from a stoat yesterday (double click on the image to full size it)

The stoat looking for mice

The stoat in a big  hurry                   

The fox helping itself to road kill     

The Christmas badger emerged at 9.40pm returning to the sett around 5.16am

The badger emergence has been eratic over the past three nights  with activity between 10p m and 3 am last evening.

This morning we had three visitors that have not been here for two or three years an absolute deight to see them,  the best Christmas present one could ask for.

three of the most elegant birds to visit College Barn Farm in three years

The three swans that visited us this morning 23rd December 2012

Bottoms up for Christmas

The three swans videod feeding in our largest pond                          

The badgers are emerging around 7 pm and remain active until nearly dawn despite the wet weather.

I have been using the rejcted seed from the house garden birdfeeder  on a bird feeder close to the badger setts where 9 different varietes of bird visited it for a feed on the first day.

A buzzard was recorded doing a “buzzard dance” (see below) I think that the buzzard was just displaying probably to another buzzard in the vicinity that the kill belonged to  him/her.