The freezing cold weather and snow has abated; Friday 10th February was the coldest day and night here this year/winter with a maximum -5c daytime temp and -13c night time temp.

Immediately above our largest pond I have an area where I heap up branches and tree cutting etc with the idea that they will provide cover and nesting sites for either small birds or ground nesting birds or a winter hibernation area for hedgehogs and cover for anything else that is being pursued.

I walked past the area on several mornings this week with Poppy & Molly our Springer Spaniels, I was intrigued to see many blackbirds and thrushes flushed from the lying wood cover. Why were they there?  the area is only about 6 metres  by 20 metres ? Food was the only reason I could think of and on closer inspection I found piles of snail shells around the odd rock within the confines of the cover. I guess as the ground thaws out in another day or so the birds will disperse, hopefully the remaining food they have been finding in the cover will sustain them until they can access the currently frozen soil as they do not visit my peanut or seed feeders as so many other species do.

The badgers are hungry; they are out and about shortly after dark until just before 6 am.

From the images that I am picking up from my stealth camera’s (18 badgers and a fox set off one camera and the other camera  recorded 25 images of badgers with one of the fox last night) they seem to be  in much more of a hurry with the result that they seem much less cautious.

A photograph of our badger skyway in the snow clearly shows a badger has acended the skyway and  exited the skyway at the far end (click on the image to full size)

The badger's foot prints show where the badger has been

 The badger’s do emerge in snowy weather as the foot marks from their set clearly show in the photograph below

The badgers cannot leave their sett un-detected in the snow

 I found the fish in the image dead uder the ice  in the top pond yesterday, a badger had a fish supper last night as the fish disappeared without showing up being taken on the camera.

I found this fish dead yesterday it had been in our top pond for several years

The badgers emerged at 6 .57pm  last evening and returned to their setts at 6.05am ……… a long night around  11hours out and about in foggy weather at a temperature of 3c.

The recent hard weather has returned our two hazel nut trees to being deciduous trees again; the leaves are now brown and ready to fall.

We have had a late appearance by field fares who flew in and dug through the overlying snow  to get at the russet apples lying beneath, they were joined  by blackbirds, chaffinches , a green woodpecker and a rabbit. The fieldfares do seem “showingly”  aggressive in their efforts to obtain food. They were in our orchard all day from 7.30am -5pm they recorded 179 images on my stealth camera.(one of which is below)

The fieldfares were not the only wild life to take advantage of the cold stored fruit, the fox also enjoys russet apples.

The College Barn Farm badgers did not seem to mind the snow either

Minus 10c last night, the low temperature did not however stop the badgers from emerging although it did stop them from digging.

The voracious badger at full speed.(below)

A very cautious and hungry looking Fox

My friend “Loppy Lugs” looking decidedly unsteady maybe he has been eating the fermenting apples in the orchard

The College Barn Farm badgers get busier,

The tracks/trails between sett entrances are really worn, lots of pot holes are being dug by the badgers particularly under hedges there is also  lots of other evidence of increased badger activity. (click on the images to full size them)

visible badger trails

The oh so late badger

Is this Ms Badger shortly to be come Mrs Badger?

I will be setting my camera so that it takes images from ground level upward in about two weeks time in an effort to film the badgers under carriage, in four weeks time it should be fairly obvious if any of the sows have cubs.

 The badger emergence is around 6.15 to 6.45pm alot more badger activity lately with holes appearing in the ground much more frequently where the badgers have dug for leather jackets and other grubs.

Below are a couple of interesting phtographs that I took  of cloud formations while out on one of my dog walks recently (click on the image to full size)

The badger emergence last night started at 6.22pm with 17 images on my stealth camera.

  image  number 7 is shown first below

image number 15 the dominant boar “lightfoot” visits at 6.17am is next

and last but not least my old friend gangly legs in the last image number  17

Four days of frosty weather!! -5c here last night.

 Preceding the frost I was delighted to see 10 teal take off the water when I walked past our largest pond, and 6 mallard duck take off the next pond.

 With recent rainfall the pond now has around a foot of water in it . (4 feet to go to the overflow)

The badgers have been changing their bedding over the past week apart from climbing their “skyway” in their search for peanuts.

 At the start of the frosty weather I left a little grain out to keep whatever wildlife that found it going, I also put my stealth camera so that it looked over the area for a period of 48 hours during that time a blackbird 2 jays, several moorhens, a crow, a cock pheasant, a Pidgeon two unidentified birds which I think were chaffinches, two rabbits, two hares, a fox and a badger either visited the grain or passed close by setting my camera off 40 times.

 I have posted two of the videos below